Filling My Pen For Action

I thumb the plunger down
and siphon black ink up
the way a hypodermic needle
siphons plasma from a vein.
My ink of choice is ebony
because it promises to last.
But last as what?
Notations,
doodles, letters, labels,
numbers, signatures on checks
or shopping lists?
History’s
no guide.
Our circumstances
change.
Regardless, writing
what we think makes thinking
truer when we see it written down.
The bravest pages of a poem
or a book began as blanks
that craved the consecration of a pen.
And written words increase
in value over time.
Shakespeare’s
one surviving letter ( a request
for money from a lord ) now seems
as holy as the hairlock of a saint.
The same applies to Jefferson’s
hand-written declaration, Whitman’s
jottings, and ( for me ) my mother’s
letters in a hatbox or my aunt’s
last sentence on an index card….
Recalling this, I watch my nib
change ink-blood into words
across this very page to show
why every word should be as sacred
as the final word I’ll write.