Book Tide

Once every blue moon, they fill the shelves:
Fiction on the left, Alcott-Auel-Austin marching neatly down to Tolstoy-Twain-Walker
Poetry and drama hang out together beneath
Billy Collins rubs shoulders with Shakespeare.
Non-fiction to the right, but more jumbled--
gardens--houses--babies--animals roughly categorized;
(I do not remember ever buying so many.)
They look lovely, but, to me, unnatural,
So they ebb away to form new groups--
A few on my desk, left open to some page for reference,
A stack on the bathroom windowsill, but only paperbacks and
(notably) only one that is bloated from having fallen into the tub
(it was the dog's fault)
A tower on my nightstand table that is threatening collapse
some hopeful immigrants hidden in the cookbook shelf
There is no artificial separation by subject or author here;
who knew that Bridget Jones would get along so well with the midwives.
(She seemed so prissy, it just goes to show.)
These little clubs grow until the shelves look sparse,
and finally in a fit of organization, they all flow back home
alphabetized once more.