Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Leonard Orr

print this page

Our Correspondance

Weekly I write a long letter to you I do not mail.
I fill a few pages in my rushed printing.
sealing them in an envelope I do not address,
tying the envelope to a water-smoothed rock,
and during my walk I toss the letter far out into the river.

Once in the woods I found a red rubber ball
so I sat on a fallen tree and wrote with my pen
a warm note to you, the writing twisted and manic
as it followed the curves and sunk below the surface.
I went to a clearing, a bower, a dell, a glade.

I closed my eyes and ran forward a few steps
and threw the ball so hard and high it nearly escaped
the gravitational pull of the earth, attracted instead
by distant black holes, by electromagnetic pulses,
guided by the flapping wings of migrating birds.

Caught in the jet stream, kept aloft by warm drafts,
buffeted by curious mallards and bad-tempered geese,
I picture the rubber ball below a bush in your backyard.
You will go out one morning and see it in the mulch
and read the intact message and laugh out loud.

You will step one year into the Gulf of Mexico
with your net bag and snorkel, comical fins on your feet.
I picture you standing waist deep in the light green water.
You look down and see there dozens of round rocks,
letters to you attached, that you gather like prize oysters.

 

Page(s) 36

Back to top