Postcard verso:
Veronica Corpuz, Pittsburgh, PA.
Dear Emily,
When I am given the assignment to study a poem,
I study you and the lines of your heart
are cross-stitched into mine: To die
takes just a little while / They say
it doesn’t hurt. This poem lives in me
46 years and counting. I bring you
to the party on the last night in
the Valley. The poets gather around
the fire. I lift you into the circle’s
center — thinking of C.D., thinking
of Sharon under your bed, thinking
of my friends who sit beyond my closed eyes.
I forget the line: The absent mystic creature
What do you call a gathering of such beings?
Heaven, maybe. Yes, this is Heaven:
a brood of absent mystic creatures.
Love, Veronica