Penned

Your company was your agenda
Each man a tally
And when each mark was made
You in turn felt comfort at your solitude
Self-satisfied by your false candor
Still, no mention was made of empathy
No interest found in trust
Only black on blank white

It was not until you found
That few of these tasks
Favored your pen
Writing away souls in dark contract ink
That you saw yourself in color for the first time
Lying flush against a blank page

Pen in hand as you mulled your two dimensions
You began to feel within yourself the third
And baffled by the bindings at your flank
You rose and wrote on the page anew
Giving full voice to a story left untold
Tears drinking in the words
As they splashed down through a dark lighting fast
With the comfort found in surrender

By this new task’s end
You peered at your tome
Thick with meaning
And sat now, open to the trusted pupil
Read by Friend and friend alike
Only to turn anew to a blank slate, pen in hand
To make men of marks
To write light into the shadows
Of those who, like you, sought to remain unseen

For from the fragile pages of your own dust-laden story
You learned that to read
You must be read
That to write
You must let the pen fall
And that man’s character is deepest
When it is most exposed

Besides
the ink left wet on your epic’s page
Is not your own
But was written by the hand of Another

Adjusting now your glasses
You lean in to write the lives
Of men who
Heretofore
Were simple marks
Giving full voice to stories
Left untold.