Page 61 - Poetry-Books

Catching the ink from the driest screeds
That ever supplied a mortal’s needs—
Money for this and money for that,
The children’s shoes or my Easter hat;
While I prosed in a practical way,
Or caroled of life in verses gay,
It drank my joy as it did my sigh—
Both undismayed, my blotter and I.
O friend of this sweet and passing year,
Something beside the dark stains are here!
I can on this grimy, mottled face
The record of many battles trace.
Penned from the pang of a scorching pain,
The sheet here blotted brought speedy gain;
There pressed the story that none would buy—
We loved it best, my blotter and I!

This I wrote on some general, dead,
That was the answer I sent to Ned;
Upside down, and the other side too,
Are words forgotten, though doubtless true:
And worse, a “Darling”; and yes, “Kate dear!”
To names lost sight of in one short year.
There fell the tears from “a woman’s cry”—
We were alone, my blotter and I.
Into the basket,— it must be so!—
My gentle and patient friend, you go;
How can another, both strange and new,
Speak with my words, as you seem to do?
How can I turn to its dull, white face
With thoughts of my soul’s most secret place?
Dirty, but dear you are. Well, good-by!
Once we were strange—my blotter and I.

— Cora Stuart Wheeler (Century Magazine, 1890)

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