Another Lockdown Poem to share with you today.  This one is less a grounding in the garden, and more a writing about my pencil case.

I’d been looking for it, ready to go outside in the morning and do my thing, and couldn’t find it.   I went out anyway with my notebook, and there it was, on the bench.  So this is a piece about my pencil – I do prefer pencil – and writing, and the dark.

The next poem will be back to getting lost in noticing the growing things, paying attention to the moment…..

Pencil case  Lockdown 17

My pencil case has been outside,
on this bench, all night.
As I touch its cold zip,
see its black interior,
I wonder.
Have these pencils known
things I have not?
The meteor shower I missed,
the Milky Way, perhaps,
visible in our now
darkened sky,
The gentle deer,
the owls?

They have known
the chill of night….
I turn over this cold pencil,
soft lead, and dark,
and hold it in my hand,
weighing its qualities.
What might it hold?

Might it be more inclined
to speak of darkness,
things unseen,
unknowable?
Might it brim over
with night?

Yet here I am,
wondering about
hidden stars,
and light that is unseen,
and yet, and yet,
also knowing, also feeling,
its cold, its dark,
as I write, and write.