I take up wooden wand, the pulsing charge
A thrum alike to life within my hands.
It surges from me to the gleaming tip,
Awaiting blood, it quivers as I dip.
Plunged deep to bottom, drinking in the ink,
The dark swirls through its vein-like filigree.
I pull it free, it lets one drop fall short
And spatter by my paper, but no chance
Shall mar the blankness that is mine to fill.
I pause as glimmers fight below my gaze
As fish chase breadcrumbs in subconscious pond,
Then touch the pen to paper–and it runs,
And floods the fibers true with fine black lines
That trace the moves I made, as present flows
In single point across the page, a dance
Of contact twixt the nib and creamy clay.
As rapt as they, thoughts swirling ‘round the point
When they leap down to weave into the page,
Or, judged unready, swift sent back to sulk,
Recording in remembered deeds not done
The mental inverse of the flowing work.
Some thoughts take longer and the pausing nib
Leaves deeper stains that dot the coming sheet,
Anon 'twill be my game to hide them well,
As buds among the trunk and growing branch
Of discourse yet to come. But now I slow,
And bring it down to one sharp single line–
And to it thus, the whole work I consign.