LETTERS TO THE DEAD: SIXTEEN

6/16/2018
for Mark Morgan (1950 – 2017)

Privy Thoughts

On this year’s visit to Clear Creek Retreat
your presence is as real as the words I write. 
I sit in the outhouse behind Swinford Place
writing to you in your “other world”:
that is no world but this one

This elegant handmade craper faces east
and is well supplied with sawdust and lye,
the smells of our daily mess made fragrant
with the user’s light spread of cedar chips;
thumbed to the overhead beam a note:
KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL

Behind me, the day’s first stirrings 
of the random assorment of youth who
occupy this stead and spend the hours
such self-sufficency requires. You
and I witnessed the hard pull of it:
the garden, hoop house, herb bed,
cobb oven; their bodies taut & tan 
were intoxicants to us two old men

They served a meal, tame and wild,
and asked us to say the blessing.
“What blessing can we give?” you asked.
“Of those who’ve come before us here.”
That is when
we wished to see what they may be

As I reach the end of what I’ve come to do,
Chinese windbells sprinkle your spirit
down the valley all the way to Anglin Falls;
it sounds like your birding voice:
hushed, expectant, knowing the call to make