अंकल अल Twenty

I brought my pen today
A pen I lost years ago
In another life
Found by you, abandoned on Stockton Street
Discarded and forgotten
It's ink, I thought dried out and spent
Dried out from tears of toil
Abandoned by my immaturity
But you knew differently
You knew of ancestral connection
Of tradition I knew not
So I brought my pen
The pen you returned to me
So I could write again
So I could speak of pork fried rice
And noodle palaces at two a.m.
Things important
Things stupid as borderline dumb
Things needed to be said
Now back in hand
My ink once again flows
Like the blood that brings me life
I forgot the importance bestowed
Within it's stalk of indigo
I forgot the blossoms from seeds sown
Life in quill, your gift in hand
A gift returned
Across ancestral divides
I thank you with these words
The ink of life now flows free
I now plant words again, like seeds
Across an empty landscape of naked pulp
Barren until words first sprout
A garden forms, from single words
Built upon an empire of earth
Sentences form in rows of dust
Dirt now tilled with verbs
Blooms of action
A world born within blank pages
All from a single pen in hand
A gift returned from ash and ruin
A gift returned
From you, friend to the world
Born from fruit you bore

A gift returned is one always given
Always from hearts cast in thorns
A gift of seeds sown
A gift on unselfish love
Now my pen, returned to me
Bearing the fruit of another voice
I give to you words from soul
Soul from heart
I cast my thoughts into the winds of five fates
Like the river's endless flow
The waters of my ink rise
Their ebb and flow constant
Always moving like a serpentine ocean
Whose constant flux
Like Cali sticks
Graceful yet quick
Physical extensions of pen or stick
A gift returned
I give back to you

When the sun drops down
Beyond horizons into a twilight world
My pen, old and battered
Remains by my side
My words
Now trees lush and green
Rooted in your wisdom
Growing tall with your others
Into an endless forest
The seeds you've sown
The fire of my thoughts
Burn in indigo and crimson flames
A forest started with a single pen
A gift returned
By you
A gift well used
Not to ever be forgotten