And this is but a dash. An en-dash, say,
not too short, but not too long like an em.
Do not add flourish. This one should well stay
within the bounds of banal brash boredom.
Not that his life was boring. But he wished
that it were so, ofttimes. That being said,
the things he said were often unfinished–
as were the inner workings of his head.
But good friends can look past that, as did he
who bore him from the mountains to the plain,
and from the city to the sordid sea,
to when it turned to triumph in the rain.
So, see, boring was not his lot. But so,
it was all that he’d been given to know.
~~~
A quill, diagonally depicted, like
it’s writing. Just a straight slash, with some lines
extending off its base, each little spike
trailing off soft at still softer inclines.
It should look like his did. As if his hand
were still upon it, writing poetry.
As if the inkwell had presently spanned
the annals of a country’s history.
He would have given lines for his homeland
if ever he had lived long enough to.
But his feather sits in the ocean sand
collecting all the stories that accrue
from rivers in the mountains down to sea,
where he knows you, and where he well knows me.