Picking up the pencil
to draw a human being,
was an avowal of my return
to that time of evolution;
first encountered, younger,
when making another mark;
in all these years, somehow,
I am no different from my past.
There is a self-portrait,
my rough hand in charcoal,
in which my Steerpike face
reflects these same scowls,
which thirty years later
are now etched by this disease,
my own drawn face
complains too easily.