The Paper World Sometimes I stroke a notebook's page, trolling for its grain, riding the palouse of its musical scoring. The 26 veins and one artery are like the hand of that old white lady who spoke to me with a courtesy like kindness, maybe it was manners but I thought it was mercy for a sentient being. Caressing the lines give the fingertips the weal of the 8 1/2 x 10 fencing-and its emptiness is like your thirst to kiss a mouth that thirsts to kiss you. Roaring Spring, Mead, Shop Rite's Wright/Rite-like another set of towns on earth, a paper world. The page feels sensual and holy, to me, like a child's worn-thin pyjamas. But how would I know? When would I have touched my pyjamas? Not when they were on , my body was off-limits, it did not belong to me. Did it belong to God, or was it just where God had sent it, exile in the apparent present. In a way, then, was it sacred, if something dirty could be sacred. Petting the notebook, I wonder how many beetles from the bark got in the pulp-masher, the boiler, how many fragments of wings in these 300 pages, or tiny tissues of mill-workers' flesh, or sometimes a whole hand. By its whorl-marks, by the golden anniversaries of the singing trees, I pray: if it were possible, may I have done my last harm on earth.
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