The Dust Jacket's Dust

Your favorite title
may not be your favorite dust jacket,
its face the face of a dreamer
or plain words.
I’d search my shelves for that cover
but I have one in mind, blue/ white
with black letters to keep off dust.
The pages sounding as when first sounded
in the author’s mind.
Between dustjacket and book
let’s face a thought, a gap between dust
jacket and jacket of dust.

On one shelf Ruby for Grief, on another
The Light the Dead See. Titles I like.
The author of the latter dust,
the former flesh and blood.

Reading one night, the author
of Spring of the Thief, which I like—wonder if
that author is somewhere or nothing—
rebuked the inattentive.
“I’m not television,”
who wears a jacket of dust,
whose Spring of the Thief
is read by the perfect stranger.