An Ode to an Ink Pen #WritingwithWoolf #NationalPoetryMonth #NaPoWriMo2020

For National Poetry Month, I am writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary.

Today I decided to try a Pablo Neruda style ode, inspired by this passage in the Diary:

This is written, as many pages in the past used to be written, to try a new pen; for I am vacillating–cant be sure to stick to the old pen any more. And then every gold pen has some fatal drawback. Never have I met one without. And then one cant be sure till one’s written a long screed. And then one’s ashamed to go back–& then one does–& then it all begins again, like Matthew Arnold’s river, or sea.

Day #10: An Ode to an Ink Pen

Oh pen,
when urgency
strikes
and I must write
I cannot
write
without you,
Pilot Precise V5
in blue,
your ink
fills fifty notebooks
you dart
and dash
across the page
only you
can keep up
with
my speeding thoughts
you capture
wisdom and
idiocy
both without
judgment
your smooth ink
pulls across
toothy paper
my constant companion
imperfect only in
your explosiveness
when traveling
at thirty thousand feet
more than once
I’ve deplaned
with
stained fingers
a small
price
to pay
for your
blue beauty