Hoedowns and Shopping Lists - Feb 26 2025

 

Hoedowns and Shopping Lists

Feb 26 2025

The feel of a cheap pen.

Pack of 10

mass-produced.

Clear plastic

lost cap

medium blue.

A generic pen

with no style, heft, or pedigree.

Writing

with a utilitarian pen

is more prosaic than poetic.

Where’s the pleasure in that

when what I want

putting pen to paper

is a sense occasion?

Because what a Stradivarius is to a fiddle

a great pen is to a Bic;

a finely crafted instrument

that calls for seriousness

and effort,

nothing so frivolous

as hoedowns and shopping lists.

There’s the sense of touch.

The feel

of a pen in your hand,

its balance, weight, and girth.

The fingertip precision

of applying pressure

and forming letters

as unique as your fingerprints.

Teachers called mine “chicken-scratch”;

hard to decipher,

sometimes, I admit, even for me.

There’s the connection

between body and brain;

like muscle memory

you remember

what you’ve written by hand.

There’s the improvisation

a blank page invites,

lines shoehorned in

margins ignored.

Where you’re free to doodle and draw,

overwrite

highlight

underline.

And unlike the keyboard warrior

tapping away

on a virtual page,

the ink-stained wretch

crosses-out instead of deleting;

so there’s no concealing

the false starts and dead ends,

no evidence lost

of how he thought his way through.

My father prized a good pen.

A precisely milled ball

that rolls smoothly

but not too.

A chunky barrel

that fits your hand

as if bespoke.

And one with elegance

gravitas

character,

a handsome pen

that’s built to last.

He passed his favourite down to me

but I use it sparingly.

Even now, I’m on a keyboard,

writing in pixels

instead of paper and ink.

It occupies

a place of honour on my desk,

waiting, I suppose, for an occasion important enough

to pay homage to him.

In the same navy ink

as the letters he penned to me

in my misled youth

and nascent adulthood.

Sometimes

the things that face-to-face

are hard to say.

The sound advice

I sniggered at

and largely ignored.