DEAD LETTERS
I get letters for the dead. They blow
out of the mailbox and into the snow.
I find them encrusted in drifts
or rippled and faded in spring,
addressed to an old man
I loved. Phillip,
lover of horses, I’m sorry
she ploughed your garden under.
I would have tended it.
Every envelope with your name
I rip open (forbidden
and uncanny) I hope
bears the message
you are somewhere—
I would forward them.
—from Rattle #41, Fall 2013
Tribute to Single Parent Poets
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Barbara Louise Ungar: “I have published three books of poetry about motherhood and about becoming a single mother.” (webpage)
