A river flows through this pen.
Dull, plasticky, dog-chewed, a dirty shade of gray.
It is so ordinary in appearance,
one might say
it could be missed
as one does the pole star
on a typical night.
And then.
It decides to construct an alphabet.
These constellations
-some call them words,
meet in deep watery privacy
and build stories
history is too small
to record.
Yet.
The pen remembers.
The ties and lies
of them that we loved
and them that we lost.
The consumed stale bread,
the overflowing bins of the well fed.
The smell of earth drenched in rain,
the puzzled look of parting- was it pain?
The wild laughter of the seventy year old man
hugging the son he thought were dead.
That exact point
when the plot changed.
The dull, plasticky pen
knows some truths.
At times,
persons’ plunge down with a flame.
Perhaps, to sift
these truths in the river bed.
The other day, brother,
you got a letter.
It came from this pen.
Strangely, you asked for an email.
Wow. It reads like a memory of things past. The last line jolted me back to the present.
Thanks Nandini! I guess I just love ink pens:)
thought provoking. can u write a poem on india-pakistan peace for my website ?
Its wonderful that you liked the poem! My pieces are mostly about one-to-one relationships, and I have never written about the very important topics that you have requested for your site. Thanks for thinking of me though!
Beautiful…more power to your pen!!!
Thanks a lot. Writing is so integral to our lives, I just couldn’t help but pay my respect to the pen that started it all:)
I remember a poem I wrote once while daydreaming in class, where my lonely blue BIC ran away with a lovely pink fine tip…. I still have a really hard time composing anything on a keyboard…. but as I get older, even I can’t read my handwriting! I really enjoyed this poem, and hope that you find something enriching on my blog as well. I especially enjoyed the last stanza of this poem, with it’s punchline of “Strangely, you asked for an email.” There’s a certain romance to letter writing that seems to have been lost by quick, instant emails…
Thanks for this!
I would have loved to read that poem! I am glad you enjoyed this piece- I like writing letters, and sometimes just having a piece of paper and holding a good pen can inspire thoughts when the mind goes blank staring at a screen:). I definitely look forward to reading your posts. Thanks a lot.
aha! found it… it is part of the anthology I’m slowly posting
http://wp.me/p3oLaI-8m enjoy!
When I was in college I never found a pen that wrote perfect A essays. But the pen I have today does OK drawing cartoons.
And what cartoons! I hope you keep creating such wonderful pieces and inspire the rest of us:)
Thanks, I copied this and turned it in to my teacher. I now have an A. (:
🙂
hey thanks for liking my blog post–you’re my first like!! i love this poem, i look forward to reading more 🙂
Glad you liked it! I’m looking forward to reading what you put here as well:) n hope u you get many likes!!