the art of the letter

Dearest Franics,

Before the ephemora of email, before text: there was paper and there was pen. There was  the physicality of the page, the epistle, the envelope : the letter.

this is a blank page    this, a pen    this, a pale freckled hand
scribbles, loops and curves,    curls, lines and circles   sliding from my pen
I conjure up from whiteness     through the roundness of letters    ink shapes of meaning

This week my mother stumbled on a box well hidden in the attic. It was labelled Sarah Photos and held all the photos from Europe, and my mad early nineties youth, that I had been missing. 

But more intimately, it had big bundles of forgotten letters; letters from years across oceans, letters from prison, letters from old lovers. Lovers who had called me lover, who discussed literature and philosophy and politics and told me stories and wrote me poems, who argued with me and sent me love. 

I was struck by all of this  history of mine, by the things that I did not remember about my life, about my relationships with these beautiful people. I was struck painfully by all the love and by all the blundering ignorance of my youth. And  I was struck by how much it reminded me about myself, how much it allowed me to gather up my past, to welcome it back to my heart, to look at the path it has led me on, to let it go.

should i punctuate  with "at this moment in time", "this single eternity" ?
in order to excuse any possible future or this particular past

This year I erased all of the emails I had accumulated from an aborted love affair whichI was having much too hard a time moving on from. It was really hard pressing Delete, and for a good reason, I realise now. More than just historical artefacts, they were pieces of myself.

And so, to you, beautiful Francis.  These letters particularly made me remember you.   In the chaos of movement that was both of our lives, I lost you.  I had no address for you, no number. I have searched for you over the years. I Googled you.  I even searched under your alias. I have started poems to you.  On reading your letter, the feeling of the loss of your friendship in my life was particuarly keen.   Perhaps this letter is the antidote to that unfinished poem; as a thank you and goodbye.

night then
and I am left to strain at the white drift
to catch at those last traces of your hands ink

night then
and I conjure you
to speak
one last time
with the brief brilliance of your words

in the wake of you.