Letters to my Probable Selves - fran claggett

[Larry Robinson]

From “Letters to my Probable Selves”

 

The letter in my unsent email file

Begun a year ago. Before.

    Revisited now. After.

 
Questions we have been asking for fifty years:
What if. When. Who. Which one of us first. How.
 
So many poems dealing with loss.
With death. The sudden losses.
The long, drawn out ones.
The sense of how fragile our lives are.
“Fragility.” Probably the most important piece in my book,
but balanced by “Clarity.” The two flanks.
Libra, holding her own.
 
The losses keep adding up. At the heart of it all,
Adrianne. Loss of a poet. Loss of a friend.
My sense of her continued presence is deep.
She understood my love for Madge.
And I understood her passion for poetry.
For William. For Eve. For her dogs.
For her last wolfdog, Lady Macbeth.
 
You told me you have been sick.
Are you well now? I don't know.
So much I don't know.
 
 What I do know:
Madge thinks only of me now,
Of how I will cope after her death.
 
”This isn’t the way we planned it, is it?” she said.
“No” I answered.
 
How does anyone know. The when.
The how.
 
I have this sense that it is okay to send you
what I am thinking.
Feeling. But is it?
I don’t really know.
 
   	- fran claggett
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