Every time I set pen to paper
I am struck with the vastness
of the world that I am entering.
Sometimes I stand on the brink, unwilling
to hurl myself over the edge of
what has already been made
into the long dark of uncreated
nebulae and whispers of
story that run through
my fingertips as intangibly as
starlight from above.
The possibilities are endless. It's true.
And the sheer immensity of creating -
such a lost, divine, and yet
most common art -
it pushes me backwards with
hands given substance by
nothing more (and nothing less)
than my own mind.

Is it hubris to create?
Miserable makers are we,
unfit to be gods
of anything, let alone the
vast, untamed beauties
which ramble in that long
and undivided brightness
of imagination.
We are unworthy all,
and I most of all;
the hand that spells out majesty
has broken heartstrings,
plucking at them
day by day
and clutching at the tattered ends
when at last they failed.

Yet still the world of what could be
expands like stars in space,
every time I step up to the
portal of that world
(the unmarked page).
What is this gift, this mystery?

To write love and darkness,
joy in misery,
these hands - this ****** ink of mine -
is able still.

Grace.

The word should be
blank,
when this hand tries to write it.
And yet the ink still flows
and forms the shape,
a living testimony
of itself.

So here I stand, one small pen
in hand, like a bucket meant
to catch an ocean of rain.
And my inevitable failure
is somehow
still,
an overflowing success.

One moment of that other world captured is enough
to stir the hearts of men,
and turn them from their gold to things above.