My favorite childhood author never existed.
My mother, encouraging me to read more,
would buy books in bulk in church basements.
Often whole collections at two dollars a bundle.
Twenty Tom Swifts came home with her one day,
books almost a half century old in 1950.
I was eight or nine and indiscriminately absorbent,
accepting the pseudo-science as real (especially
as some of it had come to pass in the ’tween time)
and the too good and sexless characters as plausible,
and admiring the wildly prolific author, Victor Appleton.
Problem was he never was.
Victor was the hive name for the endless series,
for the many ghost writers churning out formulae.
The books sat shelved for three decades more
until on a visit I picked one out and reopened it.
The plot and characters were moldering text
The language phrased for my prepubescent self.
It was impossible to retrieve the enjoyment,
and yet I gently stroked the illustrated cover,
acknowledging the transient gift given to
a boy knowing no better than to read about
impossible flying machines, obvious villains
and a moral code Christ might have envied.
