Love Letter to a Poetess
by Alan Brewer

This shared craft of poetry, the blind
necessity to string one's self out in words,

a cultivation of a kind of selective dissection
of the soul, a refinement of the fine art of dying. . .

The word, the impossible word, is Life:
the words we know are Death, and of dying,

the flame that lights what we suspect
is life is love, and know only as we are losing it.

Could we simply live, not knowing
why or caring, not needing a reason?

Could we simply die, not having to make
our only life out of our death?

Poems are trials of resurrection,
taking life from dying things;

at the least, a memento of something lost,
the photography of a shadow, a clue

to one's sadness.  There is nothing
to give away; if I gave you a poem

it would only be a piece
of what I am missing

which could only be
a part of what you are.