This is the book that got me out of bed at 3 a.m. one night this fall.

I was a little awake because the train went through, but the thing that made me get up was Linda Gregg’s 1981 book of poetry, Too Bright to See. I talked about one of Gregg’s poems in my Willa Cather class, and it was on my mind.

Because I didn’t want to wake up my husband, I didn’t turn on the bedroom light to find Gregg’s book on the bedroomshelves. But I didn’t need to turn on a light.

I ran my fingers along the top of the books on the poetry shelf, and my fingers found the volume with no trouble. My fingertips knew exactly what the fraying cover and bumped spine felt like, and they knew the exact width of the book. I slipped the book away from its neighbors and carried it into the workroom where I could read the poem I’d been thinking of that day, “The Apparent.”

Why do I know this book so well? Because I’ve lived with it for 28 years. Because it was the only book (besides Let’s Go France) that I took with me when I traveled in France and Italy in 1983. Because some books change us and become part of us and seem like an extension of our own bodies and minds.

Because fingers remember.

I love some other books as much as I love Too Bright to See, and I love Gregg’s later poetry collection, Sacraments of Desire, just as much. But seeing this particular book with its shattered jacket and eroding cover makes me understand something about how I’ve lived my life and something about how books have been at the center of my life.

Last week I blogged about Margaret Laurence's The Diviners and I featured a picture of a first edition I bought. Well, here's the picture of the paperback my cousin sent me back in the late 70s. I've had the book with me ever since. Can you see how much I loved it?