Personally, This Letter

Personally, This Letter

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Luke 21:33

So many letters lie tattered beneath the newer lessons I’ve learned.
Yet the dusty seams bring me back again to the handwritten pages I
said I would never leave behind.
One said Never was sworn for life, and Ever was the bond. Friends
and brothers, square knots and sisters; but the sworn statements
broke upon the letter of the law.

I never wrote on stationary, I rarely used a blank page. Spiral notebooks
used to sleep on the bottom bunk of the old brown bookshelf unsung. I can
see phrases, words playing like “chiseled orphans” and “cacophonies of
Christmas lights” outside a teenager’s window.

Songs remembered, tunes forgotten; I paste the chords with weaker fingers.
I’m not saying I want to go backwards; I only desire the long talks around
the firebush in autumn or summer’s sacred meadow.

Some words I’ve hacked in half, others extended by a vowel or two,
but all I remember (my heart still tarries) is the laughter and tears
that were acceptable in season or out. Our gardens were full; rich loam
and metaphor. Our hugs were held well after harvest and fini.

And Now.

And now, Your words are still my meat, though my palate has changed.
In early fall the smoke from campfires writes another chapter of the book
I’ve laid down. And I hope the same smoke will stir the embers of friends
who I used to know.

With and without; words were the life. The silence, the pale blue lines
crossing the page, the margin asking where to begin. The silence

Is the reason I sometimes cry when no one is watching.

Will You speak in words I know? I am not nearly as old as You,
Ancient of Days. I need Your newer tropes and parables to pack inside
the vulnerable windows.

P.S.

P.S. I would send it personally, this letter, old friend,
but I fear, once more, you might not return my letter again.