What is the writing that is not only a response?
Or only a lonesome cry?
The baby milk snake lay crushed on the road, as if it had swallowed a ruby and died expunging it from just below the head. About a quarter mile away, a single crow feather rested gently on the swale.
Is it this?
Is the reader we know more precious - or differently precious - from the one we don't know, but can intimate - can feel - as through some cloudy distance a horse were approaching?
How can we know we are "you" or "I?"
When I write, and you read, are we?
Clouds roll in and the sun fades behind them, an oily smear hidden in gauze. I can't separate love from sex. Or can I.
Her letters are stacked on the desk. Twenty years ago I threw away about fifty letters and what good did that do? I limp beneath memory's hash mark.
Who understands a river understands love.
I believe I led one "you" to a practical understanding of herself as a poet.
As others led (and left) me. I had - have - ideas (or are they hopes?) about how she might express her gratitude. But mostly I miss her and I never know how to say that.
Thus writing, thus this.
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