The vampire wind tries to nip a pedestrian beneath her scarf as she scurries to work. She tries valiantly to clutch the cloth to her throat. She successfully keeps the bite away, thus forcing the carnivore air to search elsewhere for her skin. She thinks: I have to face this again on the way home tonight.

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Ignoring the temperature and all parental precautions, a group of seventh graders and eighth graders invades the bookshop, writing students from the Alabama School of Fine Arts who hope to pick up new ideas in well-thumbed pages. They warm their hands and minds with ideas burning inside each volume. They think: This is great, but what’s to eat?

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I visit for an hour with students at Birmingham-Southern College, spreading the gospel of reading and writing and thinking outside the hum of the hive. They sit around the Arthurian table to see what I have to say, or to see what the teacher wants them to hear me say. Perhaps my most attentive listener is the teacher. She thinks: I wish class could be this much fun every day. Sigh.

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The college room walls are lined with books locked inside sturdy cabinets, longing to join their free-ranging comrades but resigned to the concept of Waiting. Waiting for someone to unlock the shelves and touch them once more. They think: I have all this wisdom. Wish I could share it.

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Back at the shop, an Atlanta bookdealer braves the weather to stroll and examine my paginated orphans, to see what’s in the store…to see what’s in store. He thinks: How can I make some money off all this stuff I’m purchasing?

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Outside the shop, the coldness becomes mundane. We all talk about it too much and want to go on to some other subject.

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But the vampire wind will remind us who’s really in charge, when we brave the sidewalks once more, with only large warm books hugged tight against the chest to keep the heart warm and the mind afire

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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