DISAPPEARING INK

By John Herlihy

I once wrote a poem,
Written hastily in soluble ink,
On the back side of a shopping receipt.
As thought purchased for free, feeling in the pink.
It came to me just like that, a free gift for the taking,
Like a mysterious message patiently waiting
To be suddenly revealed on the back of a map.
I threw the hastily scribbled verses onto the car’s dashboard
Then rushed back and forth in the park on my skateboard.

I might as well have bottled the treasured verses
And thrown them carelessly into the sea,
Where they might crack open on a jagged rock
For the delight of the crabs or eaten like chicken congee.
I might just as well have poured my treasured verses down the drain,
For all the time they had of a life to gain,
Created from a curious mind and a quiet heart,
Not chiseled from stone or propped up on a throne.

But they were never read,
As though they were never fed,
The irreplaceable verses just bled instead
Until the words and their rhymes were utterly dead.
When the sun shone down upon the hastily scribbled ink,
The noble verses evaporated and disappeared in a wink.
When I got back to the car, I picked up the receipt;
But there was nothing there to be read
And nothing more to be said.
The words had just disappeared in a blink
Leaving me with nothing, not even blue ink.
As if they never existed, hopeful and free
And were never meant to be read or even to be.