The feeling of buying a new book is a high like no other.
With the colors of the covers
All calling to you to pick them up
And warm their printed pages with smiling eyes.
The possibilities and choices making my mind swirl as
I scan almost hungrily over their covers.
How some are sturdy with their hard covers
Ready for those nights flooded with lamp light
Steady for you to grip when the stories within make
Your heart bleed with feelings of the acutest kind.
Some of them are soft-covered
Paper backed as if they shook off their cumbersome shells
To curl their pages in the sun, free of any deterrent.
Those are the ones that feel along with you
Crumpling at the slightest distress
Tearing with the fragility of their temperaments.
As the covers call softly my name
I think on how the pages will feel against my finger tips
At first being smooth and cool, full of promise still untold.
And then later when we have gotten to know each other
The lines of my nails will leave grooves in the margins
From the terribly twisting plots and fully felt sadness
Conveyed in the simple expressions of my hands.
I love how some books are loud
Covers screaming at you to pluck them up and rustle their skins.
And yet some are quiet
Holding secret everything within their stoic muted blues
Or careful maroon shells.
I love the smell that floods up from the pages
Like someone rushing forward to hug you at first greeting of the day.
It’s the smell of wondrous glue and ink and paper parchment
All mixed together as the book was cooked in its cover.
I like how they have a life before you get them
Being pressed and cut and carefully tattooed in long lines
Ready for you to pick them up and accept them for what they are.
I love how they look all lined up
Standing comfortably
Leaning gently on one another
But still at the ready for your selection.
I love how they are always waiting
Like the friends they are
To pick you up and flood your thoughts with all things good.

I will always herd my books into careful piles or orderly rows
Making sure they never grow cold or forgotten by themselves.
I will smooth any wrinkles to their thin pages
Search out any bits of sand trying to spiral down to the binding glue.
I will never let their pages grow warped and sad from the fatal kiss of liquids.
They will be lent only to the most carefully selected of people
What more can be said besides the fact that I will treasure them like the jewels they are?