An Epic

A simple task, an inward nod
Set forth the ink of a sorrowed pen
To gain a remnant of forgotten times
To begin a journey of a thousand lines
Upon that soft winter’s night in solitude
With a single letter in flawless sense

He’d walked those paths before, he’d known
The stones beneath his careful feet
He’d smelled the blossoms many times before
And picked a few to keep forevermore
To walk, perchance to pen he knew
Led to all things beautiful and full of grace

So he walked, and penned, and lay his feet
In dancing lines upon the well worn ground
Ignored the ink as it ran softly out
Ignored the rising qualms of doubt
Ignored the silent stabs of pain
That before had never shown themselves

And then he fell, once, twice, once more
And threw his pen upon the stony earth
No words, no rhymes, no final verse
To describe the chains of love, his curse
Would reveal themselves to his frightened hand
As the pain, awoken, bared its fists.

With frenzied tastes the writer wrote.
His words no longer sang with warmth
His pen, it slipped, and cut in lines
A path through pages a hundred times
To write he thought, to write at all
Would maintain and honor the litany of love.

In desperation, the unattained
Wore a tattered veil of hope
Romantic visions screamed in haste
Seemed close enough to grasp, to taste
The writer wrote so fervently
The unheard screams of a dying sun.

The writer now, an aged man,
Has his writing stopped to know
With age comes wisdom, with wisdom strength
With strength comes truth, to no small length
The last such verse from the writer’s hands
Claims a blank white page and thusly reads:

When the hands of time do lay us down
And brush away uncertain sands
When cancers grow and tear apart
The poet’s ink and the poet’s heart
When inspiration fails us all
What have we left but dignity?