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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal">From “Letters to my Probable Selves”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><a name="_GoBack"></a><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal">The letter in my unsent email file<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent:.5in">Begun a year ago. Before.</p><p class="MsoPlainText" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>Revisited now. After.</p>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Questions we have been asking for fifty years:</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">What if. When. Who. Which one of us first. How. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">So many poems dealing with loss. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">With death. The sudden losses. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">The long, drawn out ones. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">The sense of how fragile our lives are.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">“Fragility.” Probably the most important piece in my
book,</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">but balanced by “Clarity.” The two flanks. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Libra, holding her own.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">The losses keep adding up. At the heart of it all,</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Adrianne. Loss of a poet. Loss of a friend.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">My sense of her continued presence is deep. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">She understood my love for Madge.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">And I understood her passion for poetry. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">For William. For Eve. For her dogs.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">For her last wolfdog, Lady Macbeth.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">You told me you have been sick. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Are you well now? I don't know. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">So much I don't know. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What I do
know:</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Madge thinks only of me now,</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Of how I will cope after her death.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">”This isn’t the way we planned it, is it?” she said.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">“No” I answered. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">How does anyone know. The when.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">The how.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">I have this sense that it is okay to send you </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">what I am thinking. </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">Feeling. But is it?</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">I don’t really know.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- </span>fran
claggett</div>
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