Things I Learned from Trees and Rivers About the Lives of Books

by MEREDITH STRICKER

care of the word is care of the world
continuously translating itself
care of the world of a word
activates as we read
each page a kind of skin –– or leaf
or lével in my mother's mother tongue
the letters written through trees
Hungarian poplars with entirely
original grammars
there's the ritual of reading left to right
or right to left, up or down or
scrolling letters in lit glass
like a murmatory undervoicing of all the voices
who spoke before us in throats like riverbeds
the hands of a book fit our palms
psalms to measure sky and roots
to track a red-shouldered hawk skimming
live oak canopy edge printed in feather path
I'm living a book that changes with every reading
like clouds crossing sun –– one hillside shaded
the other momentarily bright with tall field grasses
bleached white, the stillness of a book
is entirely deceptive, its pages rush through us
turn, turn and return, a wheel, a prayer of tongues
rinsed through marshlands that write the currents
of words wet with this morning's river-mouth