Letter to a Silent Country

I fear we are lost in the same country—
sitting beside each other and infinitely apart.

So I write to you:

                who also sits lonely at a desk holding the first pulse of mourning,
                                who drowns in the sound of a numb buzz,
You,
                who lies awake in the first and last moment before light,
                                counting the tally of night.
I write to you.

I, too, am here:

                in another country
                                or another room
                lying in another bed
                                or the same bed as before.

When I wrench myself up to meet the table, I think,

                Let me rest.
Yet all my resting has also taken its toll.

I clutch this pen as best I can.
If I could, I would drop it, unlock the door, and seek you.

But this is a letter

                to you,
                               to silence.

It is a letter:

                from the strong notes of the sparrow,
                               from the steam shovel rusting in the spring,
                from the clarion horns of all cities,
                               from the dark earth into which we must sink, and
                from the same earth—daffodils.

Try to hold on to this.

Already I am losing my grasp.  The first and last
moment of light is fading.  But I am here,

                one gesture before silence, one
                                about to lay down the pen and sit, empty
                hand holding nothing, holding yours.

~ Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers

 

Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers is an editor, linguist, and poet.  She earned her BA in English from Penn State and her MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Applied Linguistics from Old Dominion University.  Recently, she won third place in the 2013 Gemini Magazine Poetry Open. A native of Pennsylvania, she currently lives in Buckingham Courthouse, Virginia.   

 

Artwork: Creatures from a different world, by Ammad Tahir