Ode To Paper And Pen Poem by Twilight Whispers

And I wonder – do they feel it
the taste of words and the
desire to paint them on the blank
empty canvas of the sky?

I wonder – do they understand
the burning fire that momentarily
bursts into passionate, hurried flames
of youth; insecurity; doubt?

Do they understand the meaning? -
the effect of a few carefully chosen words
strung together like glass beads
on a silvery length of thread:
fragile; snapping under the fundamentally
burning need to express emotion; sense;
pain; loss; grief?

Do they recognise the pain in absence of pen?
Like the feeling that spring shan’t ever blossom again?
The inky bubbles dry like a thirsty old stream
the damp chocolate at the bed of the earth
once a hustling, bustling humdrum during the
silences of the day;

gushing, hasty but calm currents of crystal
flourishing haphazardly downstream,
anxious to leave behind the brooks of the
forest but anticipating the
inevitably overwhelming estuary in
its everlasting entirety.

AS I imagine a simple notion in the
skies of my ideas
the sun of the Other World
starts to rise, the first
childish rays of butterscotch sunshine
bouncing off the backs of the
mountains as the moon yawns,
a million clouds jumping out
from the manger of the valley:

My Valley,
the valley I have created:
the place I go to when I remember that
you have left us
now.

The birds chirp a lonely melody in the treetops:
sparrows and gulls; bluebirds and mockingbirds,

a gentle reminder that your wish –
had you been aware of your fate –
would have been that I don’t give up
on my writing

for not writing due to your absence
wouldn’t achieve anything
at all







April 25th 2010
Inspired by the kind and personal words of Carol Ann Duffy, who I met on April 21st 2010 at a poetry reading at my college.