Pencil.

For something a bit more light-hearted, here is a poem I have had in my head for probably 17 years. I used to work with another blacksmith, who fancied himself as a Victorian engineer, and had strange and stingy rituals involving stationery and consumables. The joke was “you can only have a new pencil when you’ve used up all of the old one”, thus leaving you with no proof you needed one, right? Anyway, one day, he deigned to dish out some new pencils, and this was what I immediately wrote with mine.

Pencil.

I have been given a new pencil.
Ah! The literary potential!
The choice of which humble words to write,
By morning, noon, or candlelight.
The crystalisings, of my surmisings,
As many happy hours I’d spend.
And if I write in error, there’s nothing fairer,
Than to use the rubber on the end.