Black lines appear by magic from the nub,
Go looping, sweeping o’er the lined, white page,
And sounds of gentle scratching rise and fall,
And metal smells as fingers warm the pen.
Pristine before you make your first mistake,
But soon one crosses out a word or phrase
With dashes, arrows, jagged lighting strikes,
And soon the page devolves into a storm.
The edit can be done with mouse and screen,
But writing is communion with the pulp –
To revel in the blackness of the ink,
The visual rhythm of the shape of words.
Tomorrow I will sweep them into forms;
For now I put down pen with happy sigh.
*I took an earlier poem and put it in a loose Sonnet form. Unrhymed, but with meter.