Late Winter Dream
How long has it been since the mail has delivered your thoughts to me?
Now in a package no larger than a driver’s license I find
Hundreds of small notes pressed together into a block of paper, a sediment
Like stamps stuck together. It has been at least seven years since
I drove 700 miles to take your car keys away after you got lost driving home
From a church ten minutes from your house and beached your car
On a concrete island between lanes of traffic.Safe but too shaken to be sorry.
Pop couldn’t do it, my brother and sister couldn’t do it, they were too close.
They all stayed in RI. You would not have given those keys to anyone else
And we all knew that and it’s why I love you. Because when I asked you knew,
Some part of you, that it was the beginning of losing everything.
I remind myself that this is a dream, this package of your words, but I know that
Everything you haven’t been able to say, your language slowly leaking from you,
Is in this small block of handwriting, and I know that as I begin to cry
Surely it will wake up my wife, who will then wake me in order to pull me
Out of a nightmare, and with my waking I will leave behind that palm
Full of your words, which I will never get a chance to read.
It would not matter if they made no sense. I would understand them.
Translations from the English 
I understand. Thanks, Jeff.
Thanks Ann.
Beautiful and… made me cry, in empathy and fear.
Thank you.
Very beautiful.
Thanks.
Ah. Yes. This.
A new favorite.
Thank you, Emily.
Beautiful and sad and beautiful.
Thanks Len.
So beautiful. So sad. Thank you
I know a thing or two about all this, from before and now. You’ve done such a nice jobs of digging through many of the complexities.
Marvelous as always, Jeff. Your gift always make me feel, think, laugh, and sometimes cry. I would have commented but my “mouse” was
broken and just last week we were able to afford another one!.
With Warmth and Affection,
Ron
Thanks Ron! It was great to see some new work by you as well.