Iron Pen

O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

- Job 19:23-27 

 

If my words were acidic enough to etch a metal plate

I could weld it to a skyscraper antenna and each letter would soar

If my pen were iron and everything I wrote were inscribed

into the stone surface of this earth even after I’m beneath it

If the photons entering your eye just now could burn-in this line

and your cerebellum would remember me after I’m forgettable

But nothing I author into the universe will survive the curve

of the earth around the sun more than a time or two beyond me

And none of my juxtapositions will remain juxtaposed but toppled

and every insight I have known will spill into the black coffee swirl of time

All that will endure of me is the infinite already in me groping to find a way

through me into the small portal of this day or your eye or some soul’s wound

So let this liquid fountain pen or these soft flesh fingertips do their temporal work

and this erasable life rejoice in the one who writes me speechless and eternal