LETTERS TO THE DEAD: FIVE

6/5/2018

Dear Mark:
         I lost those photos we took at Ashland Estate near the “Blue Ash Tree” when I went down with my kayak and digital camera in the Johnson Creek after being caught in barbed-wire someone illegally strung across that blue-line stream. Lucky to escape with my life.  Lucky to have been a part of yours. 
         Here’s two for you:

I.   After Mark Morgan’s Acrylic Landscape
     (sketched at Valley View Ferry Landing)

     Green rustlings drift cooly
     amid the moonlight’s rejected
     appetites.  My heartbeat off-beat
     in the inklings of fog lift

     Forever fruitless over the veiled ridge
     my hot love blown out like the sixtieth
     candle… yet unshackled in the mind
     of heaven, soaring above earth’s fold

II. On my return from the Memorial Service

     at the very end of the newly paved
     lane where our two counties touch
     a thugerie of vultures chows down
     on the remains of Mrs. O’possom –
     crushed by the great gravel truck
     that lives at the end of the road

     there is no protection from the dreary
     intercourse of daily life and like
     the opossom now knows all things
     are possible, especially the possibilty
     of nothingness

envoi:
Mark: I don’t think many in our groups of friends (artists, writers, teachers, organic farmers, musicians, jugglers, boomerangists, healers,and all-around-weirdos) believe in a traditional afterlife; but for myself, I feel your presence everyday,
     Jim

P.S. There’s a men’s group meeting tomorrow at Wood Betony…know you’ll be there.