Invisible Ink – 2013 posting

.

It’s waiting –

blank notebook paper

on my clipboard,

the kind I’ve always used,

college ruled

with a red line down the margin.

My pen is made

from recycled plastic

with blue gel ink

and feels good between my fingers.

Remember those leaky fountain pens

we had in grade school

that we filled from a bottle?

My favorite ink was peacock blue.

One Christmas my mom

gave me a ball point “quill” pen

with a fluffy pink feather plume

and matching ink.

Holding it I felt like Emily Dickinson,

a fountain of words,

inspiration and opinion,

countless pink poems of love

and injustice

followed by a stunned poem

when Kennedy was shot

two days after my 17^th birthday.

Then came poems of indignation

about the war in Vietnam

and what was wrong with long hair,

mini-skirts and bare feet?

Ah, but I digress.

 .

Now my muse

puts a finger to his lips

and tells me hush,

this is just non-poetic prose

after all.

He came to me

in a dream one night

arms folded sternly across his chest.

I wanted to pull them open,

wrap them around me,

kiss his face,

but he turned away.

I woke to find my pen

filled with invisible ink.

Can anyone even see this,

or are my words

just another

rising plume of dust?

 .

© 2013, 2016 Betty Hayes Albright

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