Poem: Rorschach

Rorschach

Somehow we've lost the pen's scritch-scratch,
fountain trailing ink like dewdrops, blossoming texture on paper,
lost it in favor of tap dancing fingers, a piano without sound.
And in the same way, light box engineers have gone
out of service, and no one knows the satisfaction of the flick
of film, the snap of plastic, that illume of X-ray, no--
we instead camp indoors in rooms whose bulbs never go out,
in the hum of computers and dictation, the coalescence of shadow
in some challenge of imagination-- and I imagine a trickle
of breeze in this basement, a peek of sunshine through the blinds
because technology should not make obsolete that dream of lying
in a field tall as grain, making animals out of clouds in the sky.

Image of the Rorschach ink blot is in the public domain, from Wikipedia.