The next poem is called Unwritten Letters.
This poem comes from what I think
is probably a very common experience when you're away
from friends, living away from friends
or living away from family.
There's a lot of letters that you mean to write and never do.
You're walking along and something
makes you think of your friend.
And you start I do.
Anyway, and I start composing a letter to the friend.
And I never go home and write it down.
And this is about such letters.
Unwritten letters.
This is one of those letters I meant
to write while shaving or walking the dog.
It always begins dear brother or dear friend.
When I was a child, I wrote things down and sewed the words
into sleeves.
Thoughts like clouds that changed when I watched them.
I buried them with the bottle caps the matchbooks
in the backyard under the Elm.
I meant to dig them up.
Years later, I think our lives changed ceaselessly.
How much older we have grown?
If I write this letter, this is how you'll remember me.
The curtains shut.
The sun going down.
The cells of my body stopped.
I must have been thinking of you of all
we've said or left unsaid of all the things we meant to do.
There is nothing that I meant to say.
There's a mirror right above my desk.
When I look up, there I am.
The eyes drift.
My face has lost its symmetry.
The two halves live separately.
Is this what happens to people alone?
I'm afraid when you see me again,
my face will suffer its parts unequally.
One side will limp after the other.
Always the younger brother unable to catch up.
When I look in the mirror, sometimes I see your face,
the eyes unfocused settled within.
The mouth says nothing now content to wait.
If we reached out to touch one another,
we would find the glass dark and getting darker.
To bring the two together requires patience tact.
My face is like the life I lead.
I meant to say, I'm doing fine.
I can't describe it.