A Book Showed Up the Other Day

A book showed up the other day as if 
a note inside a bottle. It was not 
a title I remembered, though a lot 
of books have found my desk like that, adrift 
on some sea til they landed there so I 
might notice when the tide went out. I think 
it may've been a throw-in with a drink 
at Barnes & Noble—or a 'why not' buy, 
the third pick from a 3 for 2 sale stack - 
considered, weighed, perused and shrugged 
into a bag, an afterthought of smuggish 
nonchalance—then dispatched to the back 
to wait, obscured, when others cut the line, 
and be unmoved when things around the shelf 
got moved to dust, its thoughts kept to itself. 

Or maybe I had knelt to read the spine 
in some used book store, and became aware 
that closing time was near—perhaps it was 
a beam of sunlit dust motes—and because 
I had to choose, chose it—perhaps the spare 
cash I had was just enough, and ease 
of payment made it easier to go. 
Some stacks of books are destined not to know 
another reader, ever.  Libraries 
hold sales of these where no fair offer gets 
looked at sideways—sometimes, a coin will do. 
That could be it. I like to walk into 
such stacks, alone, and swaying in the quiet. 
Sometimes I buy a forlorn looking book 
like this one—not for any reason I’d 
be likely to explain or—if I tried—
could likely make some sense of.  Still, I look 

in corners.  Anyway, I might’ve bought 
it anywhere, which makes me start to doubt 
I bought it anyplace, and then without 
an explanation comes another thought—
that something needed knowing, and emerged 
in form—the way ideas seed the ground 
and take their shapes in peace and war—and found 
a bookish form was useful.  If I urged 
that thought on, well, I’m sure there was a reason 
that someone else may want to play around with. 
Perhaps it’s just a game I tease myself with. 
Perhaps it’s nothing more than just a teasing. 

And yet, it seems that once a thought came to me 
in just that way—a word linked to a word, 
a new thing—and it stopped me, and I heard 
the sound of my own breathing, like a plea 
within myself, against myself, til some 
thing clarified, and fell upon my senses—
the way optometrists will flip their lenses, 
lens after lens until one lens, at random, 
brings letters into focus.  Or the way 
you’ll catch your mirrored self the way you are, 
and feel the mark it makes on you, the scar 
of wisdom by surprise. A sentence may 
sentence you to change.  What you may find 
when words have struck and drawn you into thrall, 
is that you never owned the book at all 
—it borrowed you—and drew you into mind 
as you were breathing, unaware, and birthed 
a thought in you, from seed, for all your worth.