Letter to Love

This entry is part 27 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

 

Dear fellow wanderer, familiar now as my twin,
more handsome than my shadow: all these years
we’ve stopped at the same wayside inn to share
quick meals, a cup of coffee, talk about our days
and where we’ve been— And yet we never linger
longer than an hour, perhaps two, before the claims
of the world descend again. But now I don’t know
which is more magnetic: that tilt of sky, the road,
plain countryside rampant with scent, tall grass
where the wind could lift our names higher.
Memory or dream, was that your kiss under my
eyelid’s flicker? I miss you even before you’ve taken
leave. This morning is full of the cries of woodpeckers—
part ululation, part rusty hinge. Your heart goes
with them, or forages among the stones with sparrows,
trusting in what it finds. You never say So long
or Au revoir, only Next time will be sweeter.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

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One Reply to “Letter to Love”

  1. You never say So long/ or Au revoir, only Next time will be sweeter.

    RETURN MAIL (AFTER LETTER TO LOVE)

    Fancy hearing from you after some time.
    I have gone back to that wayside inn more
    times that I would care to remember:
    and, like you, I would wonder how a day
    would be like without you calling out before
    you leave: A la prochaine! And sweeter!
    Never goodbye. Never Au revoir. Nunca.
    But next time, it will be the tryst of trysts.
    We will quaff our wine from overflowing cups,
    we will laugh at reflections of our faces
    in the ponds we throw wishing pebbles in;
    we will wish for the hours to last longer,
    for the glances to linger. We will stay longer.
    We will wish we had met when there was
    still time, and we were much younger,
    and braver, and mad with a world that did
    not need to have memories of a wayside inn.

    —Albert B. Casuga
    04-15-11

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