No. 2 Yellow Pencils

Carolyn Caines

The humble eraser-tipped, yellow pencils
are hexagon shaped so they don’t roll away,
and lead sharpened to a fine point. Smell them?

Before Walden Woods created a poet,
Henry David Thoreau and his father
manufactured pencils, the hardest and blackest.

Edison preferred short ones
that fit in his vest pocket, ready
if sudden inspiration should strike.

Steinbeck began the day with 24,
freshly sharpened. It is said he used
60 a day writing The Grapes of Wrath.

If one can ignore the sharpening interludes,
a single pencil is said to draw a line
35 miles long or write 45,000 words.

With them we labored, learning our letters,
We calculated sums and erased errors,
We wrote essays and dared to rhyme.

We left teeth marks in them, broke them
in a fit of anger, even sharpened them
into nubs too small to hold, but always

the sight of a new No. 2 yellow pencil
with its unsharpened end and unblemished
eraser, made us believe in possibilities.