Final installment of the poetry postcards

August 20:

Dear Colleen--

What do we cut--
these arteries of attachment,
this sorrow--
the empty space between
words and breath
provides the path
of navigation--the hollow
anxiety of unknowing--

August 21:

Dear Laura--

the trick is
holding two things at once--
this balance of sadness
and joy, this want and
this acceptance--
how to live in one place--

August 22:

Dear Adrienne--

The familiar numbers,
faint remembrance in the strokes--
so far away, and the question
of where to now?
All of it seeming unreal,
nonsensical, but here we are
breathing together--

August 23:

Dear Patrick--

Tomorrow, this future--
some conjured moment,
some ripe bloom--
I breathe myself solid,
feel my steady grip
on this narrative, this
life I move through,
create--

August 24:

Dear Greg--

The crows have ended
their raucous salute to
morning--we are
bound together in our
routines, the joy of
shouting out our intentions--
I hear myself in their voices,
I sing crow songs--

August 25:

Dear Erin--

A woman dances on the street
corner to her own song, music
shaking through her hips,
her arms thrown skyward--
pigeons perched in a line, napping--
the dance moves closer to me,
and then away--
the morning rising
in Philadelphia--

August 26:

Dear Brittany--

Reflecting back, did the struggle
balance--the question of worth,
the trick of words, how they
extend and reach
into us--shifting definitions,
the assimilation of
what is now--

August 27:

Dear Mary--

These words create
a container for the day,
the expansion and
contraction
of life, the way impermanence
reminds us
what we hold,
how to let go--

August 28:

Dear Mary--

Tonight, I remember
how to smile and give
in--the breeze gentle,
the garden still--
I accept the missing
presence that held my
hope--tonight, I
grieve--

August 29:

Dear RD--

The air is thick again
with waiting--
how our destinies
intertwine, how we long
for something to change--
this, our history, laid
out before us, urging
us forward--

August 30:

Dear Charlie--

Clouds cover and part,
we hover and dive--words
heavy with history and sentiment
lead us to become--
every day we discover--
the potency of sound,
potential of memory,
the hum of not knowing
what comes next--

August 31:

Dear Maggie--

the before and after-images
bleed through the screen
of our knowing--
balloons of light,
darkness enveloping--
friction between us
filling the gaps--