A Bright Morning, also with Ink
When your fingers think they’re comedians
It’s morning. I’m waking,
pressing key to computer,
a digital quill,
when ink appeared on my fingers,
deepest dark blue.
I rose all ten fingers
to ask them, sharply,
“What’s up?”
“Just have your coffee, John.
We love and love and love
to mess with you
before your iPhone
reminds us
it’s not even eight.”
I warned them, it was too early!
But they just all laughed.
I fell into a reverie,
becoming Ben Franklin,
with all of that ink,
back in his print shop,
setting the type…
Just then a helicopter flew over,
chopping and beating
the silent still air,
But Ben wouldn’t go.
“Helicopters don’t scare me,
though they all make me laugh.
I’d use them for Poor Richard’s,
but it might raise questions…
“Besides, you and the ink called me,
so here I am.”
I knew what was up.
I could do a good deed!
Gabriel García Márquez,
they never had met!
Ink, do your stuff.
***************
Things happen
in the morning
(and also at night.)
I sit down, begin writing,
Mind, Body, Witness so tight.
I play with blue light.
Perhaps it’s the coffee…
But I’m really weird.
Coffee in the morning,
Netflix at night,
Magic conservative,
high tech shining,
fingers all inked,
Ben and me,
just being verb-ative.
******************
What would happen to you
if deep blue wet ink assisted,
flowing with time,
glass well on your desk,
filled with magic and gifted?
Green laughing gremlins like to all climb
on my left shoulder,
bringing coffee and toast,
honey and jam,
Dr. Seuss, too,
and someone named Sam.
Ink is blue.
Night is so black.
Sometimes I wake up,
but then hit the sack.
History happens,
Past and great Future,
converging on all of us, this moment,
helping you, lifted.
Don’t ask where it comes from.
It’s all our own swirl.
Sometimes I’m a guy.
Sometimes I’m a girl.
Sometimes we’re all trees,
or even a planet.
One time the Earth thought she was me!
And if that doesn’t scare you,
just imagine Plate Tectonics,
causing you Ecstasy,
with loud histrionics.
I know it sounds crazy.
I know it’s all rad.
This Living Universe has such energy,
even when sad.
It seems I’ve gone weird.
I cannot feel bad.
I felt all the sadness
for countless long years.
I let myself sink
to the bottom of the greatest Ocean,
then rose up, just bobbing,
Hands filled with ink.
__________________
I didn’t even know, until after writing this poem: Gabriel García Márquez’s wife, Mercedes Barcha, died this summer in Mexico City. She was 87. Her obituary in The New York Times is so beautiful, both for her, their life together, and the absolutely delightful anecdote about how One Hundred Years of Solitude came to be written.
If you’ve never read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, you’re in for a treat. Unexpectedly, a thoroughly modern person jumps out at you, somehow misplaced in the 18th Century. I was astounded. Also, there’s a sneaky reference in the poem to Ben and Me, but you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself (!)
