Dove into a bag full of memorabilia last night….I often wonder why I save some things and not others. This bag of goodies has been with me a long time. It’s moved to many places and sat unnoticed in the back of my closet for years at a time. But sometimes I see it when grabbing a shirt and think “Hmmm. I’ve not visited the past in a long time.” And so I dive in. I have saved many letters from both my parents….and numerous other people who have been important to me in one way or another through the years. It makes me happy to go back and see letters my mom wrote to me because she has been gone almost 5 years now. I like to revisit the relationship we had – largely on paper – because we both like to write. Most of the writings in this bag are pre-internet, pre-email or electronic correspondence and that makes me smile. I think it’s a bit of a lost art, letter writing. I always loved it….the act of sitting and writing, sometimes over days, addressing an envelop, getting a stamp and then sticking my little missive in a mailbox to go on its way. I’d also imagine whomever I wrote to getting my note, opening and reading…and hopefully writing me back. It’s so very rare now to get anything of meaning in the mail…we all have fallen victim of the immediacy of email… and I must say that now writing anything by hand is actually a little hard. My hands don’t always recall how to hold a pen and I look at my penmanship and think: Chicken scratch.

I stumbled over a poem I wrote 13 or 14 years ago. It was in response to a friend who visited me, going through his own struggles with a failed marriage. I had totally forgotten that I wrote it so I was happy to see it and read it again. Honestly, I think it may be the last poem I wrote, something I used to do regularly, like writing letters. Reading my words and the sentiment behind them took me back to a place and space in the past in a way few other mediums can.

Poem for T.H.

Since you left, my tulips have opened,

Exposing soft throats of purple and red:

Heavy heads bow, singing softly,

Hanging upon thin stalks of green.

My yard has filled with snow again –

Shining, slick and white in winters’ sun,

Still weak, but promising warmth

As earth turns one more degree

Toward spring.

In our lives a million stories wait

To be shared, whispered, created.

I hear a piece of you, offer a thread of me,

Quiet winds that ripple across oceans,

Vast and deep.

Change is all we have. Now.

At my door, a man knocks,

So much stronger than he knows;

In his eyes a boy, sixteen, sleeps still,

Ever hopeful for tomorrow.