The Letter
I am exploring forms of poetry. One is called The Letter or Epistolary or Epistle. Not that I knew this before I looked it up but a piece of learning - the Latin word "epistula" means "letter."
Here I am again, coaxing
At your door, waiting for you to throw confections
out of the window
Trick or Treat… Trick or Treat
I have, up to now, known you to be
benevolent
Always giving me what I want and sometimes much more
But trust does not come easy
on this side of the glass
I want to confess something to you
I hope this doesn’t damage Us
Yes, I called Us, this thing we are doing,
an Us, is that ok?
I’m afraid I haven’t given you what you need
Does that make any sense?
Instead of bringing you Walt Whitman
I show up with Walt Disney
Instead of Robert Bly
I bring you Rob Lowe
What I’m trying to say
is I may have brought us down.
I worry, I’m sure you feel this,
and oh I hate to say this,
that your ability is not as it once was.
Maybe I’m wrong?
I hope I am.
I have noticed one thing, as I struggle to change
the tone and the tenor and the vibe and the feeling and the spirit of this letter
Is that you don’t let me down with knowing where to go next.
So perhaps as I reflect in this Epistolary
(and yes, there we see a new kind of diet emerging)
we will venture forth as Us
Using our diet full of sweets as our starting point
and maybe even our ending point
how can we really know?
I will work on Trusting.
And, here I turn again and ask you,
can you work on Focus?
Sometimes this new diet does seem bland
or boring or dense or impenetrable or impossible or tiresome or irksome even
but I have the feeling we need to keep ingesting it, albeit slowly.
I have no expectations,
and let’s make this clear here as we make this stop along the way,
I have no imagination of becoming who We aren’t.
What I want, and it is really fairly simple,
is to make something that someone else, who isn’t Us,
might call Beautiful. And maybe I also want Us to call it Beautiful.
Not all the time, mind you.
But sometimes, or even once.
There is really so much to learn.
I’m seeing it all as a great adventure.
Maybe here I can close with this -
I am glad you are my partner.
I can imagine no better traveling companion as you.
I’m sure we will stumble, we have many times.
But we will keep going and
because I know how We are together,
we will have some fun doing it.
