Arcturus found a pencil

Update: This poem placed fourth in Artella's August 2006 Poetic Idol competition.

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A warm wind bled all over me
atop that faux-marble bench
that smelled of old jeans and chapstick,
and I watched above as thumbtacks
slowly made open holes through
the blue buckshot canvas.

If just one of those thousand
flashlights from faraway worlds
would drown me in light,
shine down like a streetlamp
to lead me through the fog and coming darkness--

then with sleepless eyes
as red as Sand Creek's soil
and dreams of half-moons and silhouetted strangers,
for one moment,
just one brief moment,
I could be where I intended.

So I sat up and forgot my dilemmas
and started home--
but then saw the pencil
positioned between my feet:
long and black with bitemarks,
a blunt tip and a worn top.

I wondered how many graphite scars
its eraser had stolen--
how many were mistakes, misconceptions,
or curses, love notes, drawings, letters or poetry.

I wondered how many more nine-thirty nights
I would pedal my bike across mown lawns,
with the sprinklers' bite ready to startle me
and the crickets humming along
until I begin to rotate with the earth.

How many more times would my eyes blink
before admitting defeat?--closing for good,
recalling only the pinpoint memories
created by those flashlamps,
those streetbulbs,
Arcturus and the others.

Would the rabid amusements of genius
and catastrophe be lost?
Would this one dark pencil
contain enough of its black-match lead
to record all I was worthy of remembering?

But then I understood
that remembrances are only there
for those that are in need of them--
and so I cast the pencil away.

And I sat at a bus stop to wait, to sleep
until 6 AM arrived and signaled the end
of the buzzing electric lights around me
that laughed so loud in the night,
ruling over the crickets.