Epistle

Rhona McAdam
From:   Old Habits. Thistledown, 1993.

My love writes in another language.
His large hands take the pen
on delicate journeys of curious
syllables, a sough on the tongue, a small
crashing of consonants, muted in the cave
of his mouth. He is lost
in another thinking, his large hands
frame the page, the letters kiss across paper,
silver filigree tied into new shapes
that please my love's eye, horizons
of aspen reaching words to the upper margins
of sky, the blue lines, the white
paper. I am weaving in and out of his story
in it I speak to my love in his mother
tongue, my lips move toward him, closing
on the soft sweet song of the words
he's always meant to teach me
on winter nights like this, the cold
a blue line of frost on which his words
hang cold as frozen birds, and his big
hands warm them to flight again
a mystery inscribed in words
I only know in dreaming, they circle
before sleep and disappear, slivers
in the blue lines, gleaming.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Rhona McAdam's works copyright © to the author.