Handwriting

Handwriting

Writing here,

leaves a trail of hand gestures,

a record of the path traversed.

Black marks on what had been

pristine white faceless world,

now forever changed

by my passage across it

via my emissary pen.

Making my mark on the world,

something to remain

after I passed by,

something left of me,

after all.


"Pasa por aqui, en el ano..."

I recall seeing scratched

into desolate red sandstone in New Mexico,

all that remains

of a Spanish Conquistador's march

past that very spot hundreds of years before,

the winds of time

having erased the other tracks.


The time-perseverance of writings,

accumulating in the presence of mankind,

as an ever-growing parental spirit

offering to emboss the wisdoms,

the tracks left by those

who passed by here before,

into the minds

of the fresh,

that they may have a head start in life,

going arm in arm

with a humanity not quite bygone.

James E. D. Cline 2004/04/07