When you reach up and take them off the shelves,

the notebooks surrender, along with lists of specimens,

mineral, plant, animal, a treasury of smells.

This is quite distinct from the almond scent

of equations and astronomy,

or even the sage top note of calculus.

These letters on the other hand, unfolded,

let out a sigh of fading ink and smoke

from rooms where coal fires have been lit.

Sometimes you come across a trace

of the writer’s or the reader’s hand,

a smear of plum or pomegranate juice,

and from the deposit or the stain,

forensic science could probably isolate

the dna, and assign each one a name.

When you touch something you are changing it.

You touch me and I change.

But the manuscripts are rare and have to learn

self-preservation. They have to teach

themselves a way to live without the touch

and there it is, a sound more like a beak

on shell, a tap, a click. It hatches on a breath

and sends itself out to the world.