Ink-Ilk

The ilk of ink like silk or sword

Permits both good and ill to word

To sharpen thought or keep it dull

To make us wanton or thankful

Look, while snow swaddles winter’s hill

The pen a violet-vale may spill

Ink-grit the chink in armor seeks

It washes wishes ‘cross our cheeks

The pen, without a sound is heard

A counselor of written word

With bold and shameless clarity

It bares its soul in poetry

Love, hate; what, as the page it skims

Will my pen spill; clamor or hymns?

War, peace; what, with its minute tip

Will form thought’s feral fellowship?

To free or not to free, the pen

Obeys with phrase our yip and yen

A scalpel in the hands of we

Unschooled in rules of poetry

Don’t touch me where my heart would be

Before your words bled it from me

Darling, won’t you pick up your pen

And write it back in place again?

© Janet Martin