Thoreau and the Pencil

The Pencil and The Word

Henry David Thoreau

found experience and words

to move us all forward,

if we but have the wit to move,

I think of him

as my pen misses some

of the sureness of ink to paper

we usually assume must be how things are,

Thoreau and family ran a small factory

that made excellent pencils in early New England,

the cheap and easy writing implement of that time,

for me, our technology has moved past pencils,

yet, as I think of Thoreau,

I want to know the pencil:

cheap, democratic,

a way for the Word

to express itself.

by Henry H. Walker
March 16, ‘18