BY JONATHAN WEST
Published March 8, 2001
My mother hates bills.
More like this
But she has always loved gifts.
The pencil last Christmas read
"To the little man with big desires."
It was a delicate example of fine craftsmanship. Stained
wood displayed my mother"s words of comfort. Thicker
then a normal #2 pencil it still fit comfortably in your hand.
I"m writing to the rhythmic sound of my mother sewing.
Wondering where my pencil came from,
the words suddenly come to me.
In a Colorado forest
the red oak stood proudly until it felt the shameful sting of an ax.
The lumberjack no longer had the heart
to cut down the trees that he loved as his own.
His company didn"t make use of the logs.
All they did was cut and strip and ship the
logs, which were bound to end up as paddles, rulers, and
Pencils.
Running into a line that doesn"t sound right,
the opposite end of my pencil
receives its first chore of the day.
My eraser wasn"t cut down in some forest but
was forged at the Dow chemical plant
in the center of Michigan.
Dow is what makes Michigan
almost as much as Detroit.
Dow makes chemical that bond to make rubber and
rubber works to get rid of your mistakes.
I lightly tap the point of my pencil on the countertop.
Graphite shavings litter my paper.
Just the sight of the tiny pieces of pencil lead tickles my nose.
A sneeze blows the trash off of my page and I sympathize
with those who man the mines digging in search of the graphite
for my pencil.
Day in and day out searching though packed soil for any sign of ore or coal.
Blue collar workers fill their lungs with
premature death to fill my pencil with lead.
The sowing machine has stopped and mother is taking a nap.
I sit back now and put my cheap, dime store pencil down.
No carving graces its sides and its just as thick as any other
normal pencil out there.
Last years gift is neatly packaged away
collecting dust in a corner of my closet.
I don"t want to spoil the carving on the side,
or the perfect shape of the red eraser on the bottom.
I have yet to sharpen it at all.
Too much work went in to mother"s gift to waste it
but I"m the only one that knows how much work it really was at all.
