Pen, Unresting

Slumber shamelessly enticed and beckoned

and my pen, tired from scuffle, succumbed.

In the abyss of dreamlessness she lodged

frozen, lying there totally unperturbed.

 

Precious solitude, my pen found in the chamber

Wailing, none was heard; not a single whimper.

But in there too, was a whole army of rust

Nourishing my pen with its scrumptious crust.

 

The stillness of the chamber, my pen found

it safe; its silence, she deemed profound;

The quandary of wakefulness, she now abhorred

This new life she’d found, she so adored.

 

But alas, the sun just wouldn’t let it be

“Rest,” he told my pen, “is dangerous to thee.”

Slumber moved aside; its anch’rage now gone

The treacherous moon had sold my pen to the sun

 

whose bright rays hugged my pen, his goddaughter.

“Please darling, no more crumpled paper,” he coaxed her

“No more broken lines, nor reverence for gloom

For my sunrise and sunset are now yours to write on.”

 

My pen nodded, smile slowly brightening her face

as she pirouetted round and round the blank page

whereupon dots of sorrow vanished and waves of spasm

painted themselves bright. Ah, gone is the chasm.

 

 

[I used to hate writing poetry because I hated listening to my pen’s wails. But soon she learned to smile, and I became more tolerant of her cries. So now I write. Yes, my pen is un-resting…]

Listen to me reading this poem. Click here. 

 

//Sherma E. Benosa

24 June 2006; 3:36 am;