Line

by danetreous

Context: Last year at Camp Grounded I met a person named Practice, who shared something like the following.

“Consider this,” he said, “a simple line
can be interpreted so many ways.
I thicken here, you take it as a sign
that object’s in the foreground, ‘fore the haze.
I pinch it here, again sequentially
and pattern you interpret, but it’s just
your mind completing its potential–see
but one unbroken line! The rest is trust.
And so in curves and breaks and strokes we weave
the textures you interpret as set things,
allowing us to alter what’s perceived,
in equal measure for both pawns and kings.
The line, you see, is base that’s oft ignored
when said that pen is mightier than sword.”