The Story in the Paper

I put the pen to paper,

And it seemed to move itself.

A story lived inside the fiber

As real as if it sat upon a shelf.

 

When the pen was touched to paper,

It awakened something dormant in the page.

A long-lost memory was sleeping –

A forgotten forest where it lived an age.

 

Before it turned to paper,

It formed the grain that grew beneath the bark

And watched what living things were creeping

Beneath the canopy on soil dark.

 

Now those remembrances are paper,

A million separate pieces from the trees.

So I will try to put them back together

Before their voices fade upon the breeze.

 

I just finished this poem last night. It originated from the idea that we write stories on pieces of paper (though I guess that's less true now that it was in the past, because of computers). In any case, when writing on paper, the pages themselves come from a living thing, with a story all its own. This poem is just a brief, fairly simple exploration of that idea.