A Pen Always Comes in Handy

Out on my back porch chair again.
It’s fall and cold.
I had to find a new pen

because one was dry and the point
of another wouldn’t roll
properly. So here I am in my back porch chair again

with a slim, gray caliber® ballpoint
pen, thinking:
my whole life’s been an effort to find a different pen—

I don’t like those fountain
pens that come with a bottle of ink
that I’d surely spill in my back porch chair, where I’m sitting again,

scratching words like a clucking hen.
And I have to say, I think I’ve found a vein
of gold in this snug wood-hard pen

like a linked joint in the long chain
of speech, intoned from of old,
out on my back porch chair again
with my capable new pen.