Letter To Self

Written in June of '09

If there is anything good in this world it is passion and we are flesh only to find it--what a sin it is to live as you do, darling, forever seeking emptiness while the world waits to fill your heart! it waits in stretching fields and in curling asphalt roads, it waits in towers of concrete and in towering trees, it waits in the music of chime and songbird and the shrieking of an electric band; it waits electric in the light which pulses streetlights to lightning bugs.
it waits curled in footprints and cupped in the creases of palms, it waits crumpled into your clothes and the furrows of your frown, it waits in the whispering rustle of gossiping leaves. it waits in shadows and dew-drops,
it hides behind your ears in a slick of hair and flowerstalk
and it whispers sometimes that it is waiting


if ever you trip your way to answer it
it is always just a few moments too late.
....

i found a little place up on the hills,
a clearing in the tall, gold grass
with rocks in a circle for sitting
and thickly leaved trees up above for shade,
with gold to every side spreading out
out, out, out into folds of hills and flats of flowers:
patches purple with bursts of pink,
mustard-flowers bursting yellow,
big beige-brown dandelion puffs the size of your fist.

someone had dumped roses on the street
still wet with cold water from their vase
-- i had picked them up on the way 
and when i found a dried, gnarled old tree
i wove the limping stalks into the stump's holes
to mark it as magic.

it was a magic place.

Reviews

[S Sanders]

Your imagery is superb. I especially fell in love with the last two stanzas: patches of purple with burst of pink, mustard-flowers bursting yellow. And: someone had dumped roses on the street still wet with cold water from their vase; I visualized that clearly. You've got a gift with description; don't ever lose it.

[.......]

i found a little place up on the hills,
a clearing in the tall, gold grass
with rocks in a circle for sittiing

I loved this part and the rest of the stanza,
This is wonderful and so descriptive.