Margins
Lyrics
The room agrees, the markers squeak
The same ten words we trade each week
My page is ruled in careful blue
The minutes kept, the boxes true
But past the line, along the seam
A spiral leaks out of a dream
I never chose to move the pen
It knew the way and moved again
The talk is quarters, targets, plans
The pen goes loose inside my hand
It slips below the rigid rows
And goes the only way it goes
The way it went when I was small
Across the desk, along the wall
The hand remembers, look, it's turning
Meeting notes to flying birds
The hand remembers, something's burning
Underneath the borrowed words
The hand remembers, and I let it
Every line it ever heard
The meeting ends, the room files out
Nobody knows what it's about
My notes are vines and birds and rain
A river drawn around the plan
I tear the corner, fold it small
The truest minutes of us all
The talk was quarters, targets, plans
But ink outlasts the week's demands
For every box I ever checked
A garden grew there, wild, unchecked
The page's edge, the narrow white
That's where I kept my appetite
The hand remembers, look, it's turning
Meeting notes to flying birds
The hand remembers, something's burning
Underneath the borrowed words
The hand remembers, and I let it
Every line it ever heard
Beneath the ink the paper's white
Beneath the day, a kept delight
Every page
Every year
I never put it down
The hand remembers, now I'm turning
Meeting notes to open sky
The hand remembers, nothing's burning
Just a light that didn't die
The hand remembers, and I let it
Draw the parts they can't supply
Tomorrow there's another page
The pen and I don't act our age