The Pencil

A modest and unassuming tool, the pencil has witnessed global events, mapped grand expeditions, documented scientific discoveries; it has chronicled famous lifetimes and private journeys; it is an artist’s companion, and is ever patient in the hands of a child learning to write or a poet listening for illumination.

The pencil quietly observes, renders, and calculates, and from the slightest stroke to the boldest pressure, its touch can bring the magnificent and fantastical to life, leaping from a blank white page in great passionate detail.

With pencil in hand, stories are written, stars dreamed upon, ideas and equations scribbled ~ and its only vulnerability ~ revealing the pencil’s tender heart, and reminding us that it comes from Mother Earth ~ are the charcoal smudges made by the smear of a hand, or how cleverly it can disappear with a simple eraser.

A more loyal, trusting tool I’ve never known. Even if you break it in two, it still works! And, ah, what imaginative beginnings can be stirred by the humble pencil… a marvelous instrument indeed. :  )

From Patricia Saxton’s “Pencil Point Series”, a long-runnng self-promotional campaign based on her logo and favorite tool, the #2 pencil.