(Read aloud at the SVW Word Jazz Event at Boxley’s March 2010)
Maybe it’s the way the different lines are made, black and white, sharp and clean. Maybe it’s the fact that they are never turned around.
Maybe it’s the way they can be combined in numerous ways when their numbers grow, to create something that makes sense. Maybe it’s the fact that they can make a harmonious sound.
Maybe it’s the way they combine in a myriad of means like stitches in a knotted row that create their own flow, providing something unfamiliar now known. Maybe it’s the fact that they help capture the ideas that abound.
Maybe it’s the way that the many textured strings can be woven together to create a patchwork of framed notions supported by colorful or perhaps concrete details that give it form; taking what was free-flowing and perhaps chaotic and turning it into something now succinctly placed with its various stringing of beginnings and endings that helps tether something trying to take flight. Maybe it’s the fact that they now stand on solid ground.
Maybe it’s the way that the patchwork quilts, layered atop one another to craft a bed of ideas and stories, of facts and fantasy so comfortable, yet so firm, that provide a place of rest for the distressed mind or a soft landing for an individual falling – be it on top of stories true, or of a fictional venue, allowing for security or escape, either broadening the mind or sharing a character of like kind; whether the words be of well-versed scribes or well-learned scholars or nervous novices seeking to model the writers before them. Maybe it’s the fact that they keep loose leaves bound.
Maybe it’s the way the empty, decorated journal feels in hand, full of potential and promise, like all the other books of different thicknesses patiently sitting in a row.
Maybe it’s the way the blank lines beckon for the print to follow, acting as riverbanks awaiting the wave of words to flow.
Maybe it’s the way the papers look so pretty, no matter the format or size, hole-punched or not, wide-ruled or thin, that single sheet ready to go.
Maybe it’s the way a single character can look, like a perfect, circular letter “O.”
Maybe it’s all a terrible distraction, the way the collection’s taken traction, the various cases representing only a fraction.
Maybe it’s all a terrific example of the word ‘galore,’ the way the stacks go scattered about all over the floor, necessitating paths be cleared to get to the door.
Maybe it’s a terrifying need the papyrus meets, of what is definite and sure. Maybe it’s all right to buy just one more…
Tommia's Tablet 
Maybe I’ll go buy one two. The ending brought a smile. At one point, it was almost an essay, not a poem, but still beautifully written.