The Alchemy of Ink
© Megan Stoner

To write: put pen on paper

and make a series of scratches

that turn into meaning.

Or to not-write: to stare at blank canvas

with pen ready in hand

unable to move.

Create something where nothing was,

the self in paper;

Be created as pen makes what you know not,

the sacred in ink.

Pound together sound and stress and sense

as words transform to poetry or prose

but then let go of the pestle of form

and rhyme and rhythm and reason –

words dance on their own.

Sometimes the writing is of emptiness:

night-emptiness, or the emptiness of dawn,

the blank slate, the base metal

waiting to be transformed through the fire

of thought – black ink and white paper

become gold. Or meaning. Or both.

And sometimes it is of the fullness of love or death

twin immutabilities for pen

that even ink cannot change.

Writing is: up-after-midnight-slaving-away

but also five-minutes-of-perfect-concentration

and sometimes nothing-can-be-written-to-say.

Always ink and paper and me –

a strange trinity.

To write is to struggle alone with the page

to transmute the nothingness

of blank page and black marks –

an alchemy of meaning.