Dear Daddy,

I'll see you soon; just three weeks away.
Thanks for RSVP'ing.

Make sure Beth and Steven are with you, too; I promised Teresa I would send word.

xoxoxo

Dear Joyce,

Thank you.

When I ask, you're there. You don't ask questions. You don't need to know the "whys" or the "whens." You just know that I've asked, and so you answer.

That's being more than a friend. It's being family.

Thank you.

A Bouquet

Between me and the world
You are a bay, a sail
The faithful ends of a rope
You are a fountain, a wind
A shrill childhood cry

Between me and the world
You are a picture frame, a window
A field covered with wild flowers
You are a breath, a bed
A night that keeps the stars company

Between me and the world
You are a calendar, a compass
A ray of light that slips through the gloom
You are a biographical sketch, a bookmark
A preface that comes at the end

Between me and the world
You are a gauze curtain, a mist
A lamp shining in my dreams
You are a bamboo flute, a song without words
A closed eyelid carved in stone

Between me and the world
You are a chasm, a pool
An abyss plunging down
You are a balustrade, a wall
A shield’s eternal pattern

Bei Dao, translated by Bonnie S. McDougall

The 5:32

She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two,
Blacked out, dissolved, I think I would remember
(As if transfixed in unsurrendering amber)
This hour best of all the hours I knew:
When cars came backing into the shabby station,
Children scuffing the seats, and the women driving
With ribbons around their hair, and the trains arriving,
And the men getting off with tired but practiced motion.

Yes, I would remember my life like this, she said:
Autumn, the platform red with Virginia creeper,
And a man coming toward me, smiling, the evening paper
Under his arm, and his hat pushed back on his head;
And wood smoke lying like haze on the quiet town,
And dinner waiting, and the sun not yet gone down.

Phyllis McGinley

Dear El G.,

Wherever you go, whatever you do . . . I just want you to know that I really do miss you. I think of you often. And try as I might, I just can't bring myself to remove my link to you.