Fake Glasses

You wear those fake glasses,

the ones that make you look like a scholar

or a mischievous librarian

Who lures young, naïve men like me back into the stacks

to give private lessons on the library of congress and the great novels of the Lost Generation.

You take off the glasses and let them dangle from their beaded lanyard,

And your eyes look up with an honest sparkle,

Free of guile, content and trusting,

And I forget about the icy sting on the tips of my ears