Motley Epistles

The letter you wrote said many things
And yet left out many more
You love the snowfall and the wilderness
But loathed to be indoors
You wrote how your spirit would rise within
A warm summers gust
How you loved all of nature but despised love
And would not trust

So I would read those coded manifestos
To learn what were your wounds
To see if they were tied like the wild
To Earth's imperious moon
Line upon line, word around word
Inflections beyond detection
I would read my emerald veins would bleed
And I'd decipher every section

Then with enigmatic turns your letters
They would change
Like the seasons always do in their
Ever varied range
In Springs your Sanskrit could heal
The barren land around
Bubbling forth like a brook
You words were Nature bound

In Summer they could swelter
and in their mirage like subtlety
I was forced to magnify
What you would not reveal to me
In Fall there was always whispers of
What was and would soon come
Still in every paraphrase
Your truths would seem to run

Within the world of written words I read to see
Through your shades of silence
To see if within your metaphors was
Hidden peace or outright violence
Now after all this time I fail to learn
If what I read was true
If underneath your craftiness was
Any revelation of the unpretentious you

Under pain of perjury I swear it as I am-
You are yet far from me
And it is in this and only this
That your words and I agree.