When the rains came

When the rains came
the books were unprepared,
languishing in their regulated air,
they knew no more of wet
than a babe of fire
or an animal of greed.

The drops started slow,
cold dark moisture creeping
along the undersides of pipes,
melting through crevices,
plummeting in the manner of spring leaves,
patient for their fate.

When they reached the wall they balked,

hesitated.

The drops behind piled down upon them,
forced them to push through,
not hungry,
but desperate to obey gravity,
however slowly they would go.

Now, finding paper,
old trees,
the water soaked,
spread,
saturated those folds of wood and ink
and tried to remember
the call that nature gave
to water and to wood.

The water soaked,
and remembering by instinct,
told the books, “drink. grow.”

At first it was an onslaught
to paper that had never known
worse than cries of censorship,
which does not warp the page
nor smear the ink. Gradually,
listening,
they drank.
Page by page,
thoughts hazy as the ink ran,
as the pages twisted,
they tried to remember being trees.

Eventually the water stopped,
human error made right by human hand.
Some books were saved.
Some had gone mad, the lust to grow
turned their spines to sap
and their pagination
to rings of age beyond their memory.

Later, tossed out amidst debris,
the books, mad with life,
found sediment,
water,
sky.

And from each page,
a tiny sprig took hold,
following down into the earth,
the driving voice of gravity and life.