My Father
My father is 88.
Yesterday I got a letter from him.
He said he has not been feeling very well lately
for in these last six months
he has lost four of his friends
and three of his teeth.
Poems on the topic: letter
Poems on the topic “letter” on Poets.by.
Letter from My Father
My dear son,
thanks for the invitation
but I can’t come.
It’s spring time now
and you should know that I am busy.
The snow just died and I have to go to its funeral.
Leaf buds are going to be born soon
and I have to attend their birthday parties.
After that the flowers
are going to have
their wedding celebrations
and I cannot miss those.
You know,
last month death invited me too
but I told it that I couldn't go.
I said, “It’s spring...I'm busy”.
First Leaf of Fall
First leaf of fall
as temperatures drop ,
letter from home.
Seventy-Five
Did I not
remember?
No, I did not.
So you showed me
the letter, written
in my own hand.
Letter from Prison
My dear friend!
This letter for you
I’ve written down
here in this green jail
Where my word smells like grass.
And my dreams are getting wet in the rain.
Here, where the life and death
have no demarcation line.
Here, where the grass, the rain and flowers
die in front of your eyes
and are born again into a day
as if by magic.
It Is Only
It is only a moment of forgotten joy
but it lives none-the-less.
Trees
echo the road
and,
unlike the past,
there is no one waiting for me.
I turn to your memory of solace
and pain, needing something concrete as an anchor.
Walls
greyly shadow
and
take away
the light.
Your letter arked our pasts, protecting old lies
and unremembered betrayals.
A Vase for Allison
From Montreal
Came a flattened tube
filled with a poster
of a picasso print
(such a descent
into affordability).
I have no such treasures for you.
I have no reason
to search for gestures
of forgiveness.
Instead
find a flower
and,
the next time you visit,
drop it softly where I will find it.
Afterwards,
The Post Box
There is something very wonderful
In the posting of a letter--
So few acts have the clarity of this.
A clear-cut, forceful and far-reaching act
Of pain or bliss,
So it may be:
Irrevocable in the subtlest way--
To-day--
You see?
The post box flashes red
A sign and seal of dominating law
Through April green, or hard and glittering white
Of winter snow.
One may have vacillated day and night,
Longing to end the turmoil, stress and strain,
Questioning what is best or wise or right--
Letters Found Near a Suicide: To Wanda
To you, so far away
So cold and aloof,
To you, who knew me so well,
This is my last Grand Gesture
This is my last Great Effect
And as I go winging
Through the black doors of eternity
Is that thin sound I hear
Your applause?...
Hannah Armstrong
I wrote him a letter asking him for old times’ sake
To discharge my sick boy from the army;
But maybe he couldn’t read it.
Then I went to town and had James Garber,
Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter.
But maybe that was lost in the mails.
So I traveled all the way to Washington.
I was more than an hour finding the White House.
And when I found it they turned me away,
Hiding their smiles.
Then I thought: “Oh, well, he ain’t the same as when I boarded him
And he and my husband worked together
And all of us called him Abe, there in Menard.”
As a last attempt I turned to a guard and said:
“Please say it’s old Aunt Hannah Armstrong
From Illinois, come to see him about her sick boy
Absence
Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool,
Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool.
Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb,
Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim.
Like soft rain-christened sunshine, as fragile as rare gold lace,
Your breath, sweet-scented and warm, has kindled my tranquil face.
But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties
Now, through the menacing miles, brooding between us lies.
And more than the songs I sing, I await your written word,
To stir my fluent blood as never your presence stirred.
Letters from Home
Letters from Home, you said.
Unopened they lay on the shack-sill
As you stared with me at the prairie
And the foothills bathed with light.
Letters from Home, you whispered,
And the homeland casements shone
Through the homeland dusk again,
And the sound of the birds came back,
And the soft green sorrowing hills,
And the sigh of remembered names,
The wine of remembered youth,--
Oh, these came back,
Back with those idle words
Of "Letters from Home"!
Over such desolate leagues,
Over such sundering seas,
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: