The pen wakes like a small animal, eager and nervous,
its nib a whispering toe that finds the page’s skin.
First a thin complaint, then a steady braid of ink;
letters like footprints, each one a tiny arrival.

There’s a sound like someone clearing an old room,
the scratch that makes thought leave the head and live on the tongue.
Mistakes rustle; erasures, smudges, the honest clatter of practice.
The line learns its own weight: quick here, patient there.

A sentence is a trail; a margin becomes a small country.
The pen digs a well where memory can drink, draws ladders out of doubt.
Sometimes it scuffs in the dark, sometimes it sings clear,
but always it keeps the world in reach by giving it a line.