Poem

Pre Tense

This is another letter addressed to absence.
A shadow in the corner lurks, waiting for the delivery
of the envelope, brown and old, scented with wood shavings,
tears, old cloth. Another pen writes another poem
for a man long gone, left for a colder clime,
a colder woman. This is a cycle we are familiar with -
the shift from light to dark, presence to absence,
another bedspace with the imprint of another body,
the sheets slowly dissolving into its soft and proper shape.