I remember --
a pen that my grandfather gave me
And I remember the day its ink ran out.
The last few lines,
scratched desperately on a journal page
the last letters fading into grooves.
I am happier now, of course,
and yet something in my fingers
remembers the gift,
and misses that desperate scratching --
word upon word
wound upon wound --
in the time before I knew words like:
baseline
mania
diurnal variation.
I remember --
a self-styled holy man
expansive beard and booming voice
declaring to a crowded auditorium:
"We are like this pen,
useful for God as a writing tool
but easy to cast aside when we are dried up."
Thrown away when no longer useful, he said.
And I remember --
saying to myself,
"That is not faith."
Faith, you see, looks forward in hope and,
in times of dryness and fading
imagines the poems that are yet to come.
