A Life of Wonder

I found this video by way of my friend Alex.

A teacher in Mexico sings to her young students to distract them from the gunfire outside of their window.

See more here.

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I bought a box of lover letters, most of them unread, at a roadside flea market. They’re from the late 1960s. A man, married with kids, is writing to a woman whose affections he’s trying to win. Clearly, they’ve spent time together, but she will not marry him. In some of the letters, there are pictures and greeting cards. In others, just his block text. In my favorite so far, there are about 150 total, he realizes he’s writing a love letter to her and becomes embarrassed.

I am thinking of sending a few of these love letters to friends as a gift but for now am savoring each one. I’ve already Googled to find if either of the people in these letters are living. I haven’t found them to be.

Since the letters are only him writing to her, I’m having to reconstruct her from his image of who she is and what she said.

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I thought about this idea, this idea that if I wrote one poem a day for the rest of my life I could cover a room with them, I could string these poems of mine on clothes lines and throw them in the air letting them fall like leaves in autumn, if I wrote one poem a day, just one, there would be space for me to discovery something fresh, something I did not know and could never find in a book, in an experience.

the violin, i cannot claim to understand how to play, and I do not know the instrument as well as you must. I do know it makes me feel, I do know that when I hear it I see scenes and not images.

i know these people that are no longer living, some are alive and not a part of my life, and some are not alive. Their words still in the music I hear in speech, their words very much a part of mine. In no order I introduce you to these words. They are “generosity” or more specifically “generosity of flesh, of spirit,” they are, this phrase “if it’s the good lords will and the creeks don’t rise,” they are, they are words I cannot share with you because I hold them too close to me.

I thought if I wrote a poem a day for you, that you and i, together, could place them high like piles of leaves you see, and jump into them slide our arms like angels of the fall, sliding our arms like light through a stained glass window, I thought I’d write a poem a day for us, and so it goes.

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