A Teleological Instrument
What delight to pull from its box
a yellow-orange rod of hexagonal persuasion
Bursting scent of forest, woody grain,
delicate charcoal vein that spills
it’s atoms into creation itself.
Pondering our acuminous implement,
we wonder how hard we can push
before it breaks, its tensile strength.
Of what matter is its soul composed?
How much burns of what we take?
Why pink ends? As we crumble them down.
How dense? Grinding away at the tip.
(As if the shavings at some length could elucidate)
Tested, we find we’ve extinguished our lead—
for, in all this, defining the pencil,
we miss the point.
Noel Wingard is a poet, artist, and published biophysicist. Her poems have been performed as interpretive dance internationally, exhibited at The Grotto, as well as published in Willows Wept Review, and Hail Muse! Etc. She is a two-time alum of the Ashbery Homeschool, a member of Not-the-Rodeo poets, a long-time member of The Virginia Center for the Book, and a printmaker. She currently resides in the mid-Atlantic like an electron cloud.
“The first pencils were lumps of graphite, eventually held together by some sort of fibrous material. Soft, dark, metallic materials were often confused with lead, leading to the term being used to describe the graphite in pencils. The first recorded description of a "lead-holder" that we would recognize as pencil, was made in 1565 by polymath naturalist Conrad Gessner, in a treatise he wrote on fossils.”