Tuesday, October 01, 2013

On Reading the Essay of a Friend

Litera scripta manet, so we're told
but words written on the flesh
must move when the body moves;
words written on the heart
must beat.

The scrape of metal on stone fades
into silence. I almost think I will
set myself to unwrite every word –
my tongue at the corner of my mouth,
my pen filled with white ink; that I will carefully
trace every line you wrote,

until the words gleam only like
old scars, caught by a chance
change in light: weals of meaning
to be traced by a lover's hand.

4 comments:

Dick said...

'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' is one of my favoured gravestone lines so the poem speaks to me, Dale! I very much like the notion of unwriting every word with a 'pen filled with white ink'.

Dale said...

Thanks, Dick!

Zhoen said...

We write our lives, then we unwrite them. Construct the destruct. I like this very much.

Dale said...

Thank you, Zhoen!