The Sly Calligrapher

It is in the whiteness, the blackness,
the symmetries, the imperatives of spontaneity
that he rediscovers his life,
 
the undulating world,
vestiges of the moon, the willow, the mist,
 
of the centuries,
 
in the odors of the paper,
the voices of the ink,
the caresses of the brush.
 
We are making the demon of acumen grin,
he murmurs, the purist, the iconoclast,
 
honoring a bold dissolving stroke,
a weaving, gliding line,
a worthiness of the spaces,
 
a personality of the wrist.

Oliver Rice | Mudlark No. 41 (2010)
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