Whiskey Breath

Years from now, when I write
that a character's cheerful scruffiness
hung about him like the breath of gin
Will I remember Carol Shields' description
on page 118 of Small Ceremonies
"A cheerful scruffiness hung over the station
like whiskey breath"
And is that plagarizing
or selective memory
or the buried stuff we undig and take as ours

But it happens, reading Rushdie
or Elmore Leonard
That phrase, a delicacy with words
clicks in my mind and makes me pause
to re-read and smile, salt away
and I know it's hung there like a cheese
ripening, waiting out some future knife
I am what has been flung through my mind
from every source

A writer is supposed to use the observed
Noticing the stranger sprawled inelegantly
Each detail of his clothes, closeness of his eyes
mole on his cheek, button missing
But what of Anne Rice's images of Venice
even though I've been there
Do they creep into my work as well
a selective memory
plagarized, remembered, borrowed, what?