Closing

  for Larry Levis

Closing the store, I go upstairs

to turn off the lights in the room

where your books are kept.

Do Not Touch written on paper

above the shelves.  Wordsworth.

Cormac McCarthy.  The well-

worn spine of The Body Farm.

Out the window, night in a city

once burned down.  Cars rumbling

over the cobblestone of Shockoe Slip.

Years from now, I will go through many days

without reading a poem. I will end up

far away from this room,

in a blue carpeted office

of fluorescent lights, paperwork. 

Jim in New Jersey will call,

ask what I did with his invoices.

And one night, I will pull out your book,

stare at you on the back of Elegy

and then read, finding some of you

again. I turn out the lights and close the door

to the room where your books are kept. 

Some read and unread.

Jeffrey Berg received an MFA from New York University. His work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Gay & Lesbian Review, and Hiram Poetry Review among others. He lives in New York and co-edits the online poetry review Clementine.