Epistle

the nine things he left

1.
all wives are immigrants:
they run into women,
see the Old Country
and run home

2.
there is no second cry
for help;
there never is,
he finds
and sits back down

3.
strange to see old men in my friends' faces;
stranger still
not to see them
in mine

4.
Read your letters last night
and burned the last one
so I wouldn't know
the end.

5.
April is no time for poetry
because it makes you forget age
and sights of better days.
No man is old then.

6.
My body is real
because it sees itself
in the glistening ink
that runs behind
thought

7.
there is nothing for us here
there are no shadows here

8.
You say it has already left
it's passed us
like the growth of a tree
or a grandchild

9.
I beg to differ