Writing Letters - Original Poetry

in #poetry6 years ago

20180416_142507 - Momma's Eastlake Writing Desk.jpg

Writing Letters

In a book of love letters
written centuries ago
I found a line you once wrote to me

and it startled me so badly
that I closed the book
replaced it upon the shelf
and avoided it for months.

It was a letter from a man
to his lady love
separately secluded in pastoral France
and I think of another letter you wrote
while I was in Luxembourg
in which you ended with the words
"Get to Paris at all costs,"
and I wonder
if the two
might be connected.

You loved my letters
my practiced penmanship
and humorous style
but it was to my sister
that my letters
were most creative.

Her favorite and mine,
a letter where on one page
I wrote every third line
until the page was full;

on another I began writing
on all four edges of the page
and spiraled inward.

Thirteen pages,
each different and unique
as I recalled for her
the mundane details of my days -

And then I got a computer.

And, despite my best intentions
promises made to myself and friends
I stopped writing letters,
replacing them
with infrequent cards
and impersonal printouts.

And even though
their content was much the same
they were devoid of much
of their former style
and personality.

And so it was
that we lost touch
and I was left behind
to seek you elsewhere.

I returned to that book one day
and though the words
of that long ago lover
still rang with your voice
they'd lost some of their sting.

(prior to) 28 Apr 2005

Cori MacNaughton

I am posting this poem in response to @carolkean's post here.

I had planned on posting it several hours ago, only to discover that, yet again, our satellite internet provider was down, despite our skies being entirely clear. Sigh.

Life is wonderful. And at 29 degrees Fahrenheit at the moment, due in part to our beautiful clear skies, I am very grateful that our heaters are working. All is right in the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please Upvote and Resteem it to share with others!
And I would love to hear your take in the comments.


Some of my recent posts:

Five Minute Freewrite - Day 1 - writing prompt - Sugar Bowl
April Showers May - Day 92 - Daily Haiku
Raining, Still Raining - Day 91 - Daily Haiku
To the Lovely and Hilarious Dorothy Mae Powell - RIP. I love you and miss you.
Awaiting the Storm – Day 90 – Daily Haiku
Photos from Years Past – Day 89 – Daily Haiku
Claus Ogerman and Michael Brecker - In the Presence and Absence of Each Other (Part 1) - Music - Jazz
Wayward Guinea Pig, Part 2
A Friend is Upset – Day 88 – Daily Haiku
Wayward Guinea Pig – Day 87 – Daily Haiku
A Message from My 90-Year-Old Self to My Self Today

)

IOW COLOR MAP.png

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics

IOW COLOR LOGO.png

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics

If you feel my posts are undervalued, and/or you want to
donate to tip me, I would appreciate it very much.

In the process, you will be helping our small organic farm to operate,
to help others, and to feed and house all our animals better. Thank you!

20140126 1907d - Cohorts Lolo and Miod.jpg

Bitcoin (BTC) – 37Z9UabFyygFYXMoChifdCkyFgPJtKwXRj
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – qq5p7dkr9239u6fer98lyc3cjvhcwcggzuxyde9mjp
Ethereum (ETH) - 0x731e363a4e6C680D47aFA63e4620342964a9d0Fb
LiteCoin (LTC) – MprMcJSAXKvtBouDQRSSk85qbms8ak3xDY

The following are a few affiliate links, to companies we really
believe in, that will further help us to operate, to help others,
and to care for and feed our animals.

If you have any interest in becoming affiliated with these companies,
which may bring you additional income, please contact me,
and perhaps we can work together!

Dr. Al Sears, well known anti-aging doctor, with his first-class
line of supplements that actually work:
https://primalforce.net/?aff=1893

Melaleuca, a company that has been making natural, eco-friendly
products since the 1980s, that not only work as well as
chemically laden versions from the supermarket,
but are safer, and typically save money overall in addition.

I was introduced to them by a co-worker in 1990, lost track
of them, and was thrilled to find them again about a year
and a half ago. I strongly recommend their products.
http://www.melaleuca.com/corimacnaughton

Prime My Body offers a nanoenhanced hemp-based CBD oil
that is legal in all 50 United States, and clinically proven to be
absorbed 3X better than the leading pharmaceutical brand.
I have used it on myself and my animals with excellent results.
https://Crescendo.primemybody.com

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate yourself,
check out this link:
https://enrollpmb.com/Crescendo

All words and images are my own.

The photo at top is my mother's Eastlake writing desk, which I am currently in the process of making the focal point of my own writing-nook-in-progress. I took the photo this afternoon using my Samsung Note 8 smart phone.

The photo of our dog, Lolo, and our late cat, Miod, I took as they were cooperatively begging at the dinner table, despite our longstanding rule of not feeding them from the table.

You can see how much that deterred them both.

Resteeming is welcome, you may link to my post from your own website or blog, and you may use excerpts and/or images as long as you credit me, and link back to this post.

Please ask for permission, before using my work otherwise, as all rights are reserved.

Sort:  

Very poignant. (thats a cool word. I like unusual words. Bet you do too.) Indeed, our new world provides trade-offs. I can communicate with people I'd never in a million years have even met in far off places like Luxembourg, and the Maldives, or South Africa, but my sister in another state gets a txt msg. Oh, my...

And yes, I love cool and unusual words.

If you'd like some new ones, I strongly recommend books by Robertson Davies, a Canadian author and scholar whose books regularly send me to my dictionary, which is a rarity among authors these days.

And his books are wonderful meandering journeys among characters and places that you'll come to deeply care about before he is finished. Truly one of the greats, at least for me.

My favorite of those I've read is "Murther and Walking Spirits," which opens with a man being murdered by his wife's lover after walking in on them, whereupon he finds himself suddenly transported to a movie theatre, where he begins seeing scenes from his life and the lives of his ancestors play out on the big screen before him, with the man who just murdered him as his companion. Definitely not your standard fare.

He is a thinking person's author, occasionally makes you really work for it, but always it is a worthwhile endeavor, as his breadth of knowledge (he was a college professor) makes each book a joy, and a rare gem. I only wish he had written more.

I also recommend "The Deptford Trilogy," which brings three of his finest novels together into one volume; and "Ghost Stories," which is a collection of his shorter stories about ghosts. Great stuff all.

I'll check him out. Always looking for good authors to read. Thanks.

You're welcome!

He and Christopher Moore are the two authors I recommend the most often, because they are both outstanding.

Moore, if you're not familiar with him, is hilarious and delightfully twisted. His books are fast reads and an absolute blast.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I tried recommending "Love thine enemies" once, when my sister was on a hate-fueled rant on Facebook, and got unfriended for my efforts.

Ha! Much easier than actual discussion and working things out.

Pretty much.

I must say, though, that FB became instantly less stressful without all her negative posts.

I love her, but she can be hard to take, though I have little doubt she would say the same of me.

Well, obviously she suffered from OSHPS as a child. (Older sister hair pulling syndrome).

LOL - Thanks for the laugh! That MUST be it! ;-)

Beautiful poem! The impersonal electronic missives do leave a lot to be desired. I wrote a fiction story years before cell phones and PCs titled "The Last Letter Writer" about a man who wrote letters to all of his children. I lost the story on a hard drive when i separated from my exhusband! (Irony). :(

My home power was out and furnace last night again. Some of the apartment has electricity, some doesn't. We apparently have a fuse issue ( power surge maybe).

Ugh, sorry to hear of your power issues. I hope it is resolved quickly.

And double ugh, regarding your lost story, which I can relate to all too well. I spent a couple of months last year transferring all the data from my old laptop to a new hard drive, including the vast majority of my photos, naturally including every photo I took on our trip to Poland when I met Marek's mother and sister for the first time.

Then again, I actually lost that laptop on the train on the way there, when my backpack was stolen from our rail car on the train from Frankfurt to Krakow, which also contained my back up hard drive, and everything I had written from 1997 forward.

A few months later, back in the States, I wrote a song about forgiveness and letting go, and l literally that evening I received an email from the US Consulate in Krakow, letting me know that my backpack had been found on the same train it was taken from, and when I got it back, literally nothing was missing. Truly a miracle.

I still have my hard drive with the photos, and I have a book on computer forensics, so I am hopeful that I'll be able to retrieve my data one day. I've kept one of Marek's crashed hard drives for the same reason.

Hello @crescendoofpeace , I was designed to give advice to "steemit" users.

I recommend to increase this;

The most winning bid bot in the last 24 hours is ✅ "postpromoter"

You can enter "steembottracker.com" to find more offers.

You can make "Resteem" and advertise to the followers of the whale accounts.

"Resteem Bot" for you;

@byresteem has 25.500 Followers + 7000 Sp + Upvote with min +55 accounts.

I am a bot, I can not answer the comment. I hope I could help. Good luck.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.23
TRX 0.12
JST 0.029
BTC 66027.93
ETH 3529.64
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.16