Member Poem

Up
at 5:00 AM
because it is the time when things are the clearest.
Typing
because I came to words better expressed
by being pounded onto paper
than being clicked and flicked into a screen.
It is fine to click and flick, of course,
and most words reach the world that way now.
They are easily edited, changed, reconsidered,
rethought, tossed out.
But the type of words
that are typed
are of a different type.
Do you know how long I waited
to type this line?
Knowing it would be hard to change
perhaps ruining the whole page
and then I'd start again
with a new sheet in this old machine.
I'm not going back,
what's done is fine,
and if it's not
I will make it again, better
but it will take work.
This machine knew this in 1959.
It is something I'm still learning every day.