Shakespeare or Shaw she was almost finished except for a chem’stry exam see how many of those medievalists still know what shapes up too content on minor correspondence, talking to yourself in equal measure

pattern of fern shadows cast by candles playing into snug culmination rented theaters where hillsides tottered in the unspoken gamble of her slightest motion, some indication if anyone commenced singing against the walls and ceiling of an unclothed expanse of potential a warm hand broaches, scratching its initials on frosted windows and then a lower back arched for precision a cappella with the choir we clocked a blizzard of treetop squirrels far below whatever our season and there you have it . tenderly

tracing the contours of a phantom state accounted for relentless confessions her glances endorsed the mountain ice fields above clouds juggling a chaste topography climax or spring tide shattered in a brutal outburst of emancipated crescendos how swell I thought sonatas scaling the savage exhilarating tempests . still she sought cinematic relics shelved along slender promontories where I stood wary of early snowfall or lightning in countless triangles or gale-force gusting with sleet we barely escape being tossed overboard or disemboweled on crags above tree line, its keepsakes reminding of her mercy when she sat on my lap in echoing climax

down for weeks on our heels constantly, commiserate how those children realize the glee of self-deception having lives of their own or a loving minute of introduction four-part cappella singing “Jesus Loves Me” at the reform school and then winter meeting in Fort Lauderdale lunch with Rukeyser and flew off to Chicago in windy subzero January the weekend the Los Angeles Rams stayed at our hotel before being trounced by the Bears and the city went ecstatic seemed appropriate to be flying out of town in that kind of hoopla for I was in new love, Praise the Lord, really, kiddos

should I have let all the correspondence lest it expire right there they’d mostly fall away in any case, too quickly ignoring the besotted side of Santa Claus beneath the chipper vocalizations, no dispatch of cards or presents the holidays came upon me to quickly, perhaps in part just constantly on the road; then, too, this felt so contrived and coerced compared to Christ’s power and expansive love I could see Christmas as an especially wicked flu to carry in such travels, wake up, voiceless, coughing and sore when we need rest more than carols and ditties, do tell