Observations and Insights on the Nature of Things
This monthly column features brief essays, poems, poetic micro essays and photography by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico.
Look for a new post every first Friday.
Escribir
It started in stone
carved and painted with petroglyphs,
symbols with real and spirit world meaning,
symbols shared between families,
clans, villages, civilizations.
It started on the dried, pressed
fiber of plants
as ornate lines drawn
with oily ink, flowing
down from the hollow barrel
into the sharpened tip of the quill.
The primary flight feather
of a goose or swan,
became a perfect instrument,
a pen with which to inscribe
onto papyrus and parchment,
a continuous movement of loops
indicating agreements, trusts,
instructions, prayers, love.
It started as a way to reach
beyond the carry of a voice
and the length of a life,
creating a permanence
of thought captured,
held, then flung into
an unknown future.
A mental trajectory
from the quill tip
of a golden eagle’s
forgotten feather,
it became flight.
Photo Credit: Stock
