James H. Duncan’s most recent poem to appear here was “The Reservoir” (September 2016).

Things we don’t yet possess
By James H. Duncan

letters arrive in the mail ragged and torn
and damp from miles and skies, blue ink
bleeding and the words skipping out
of existence beyond the torn edge of lined
paper where the whispers become storms
and the truth becomes cold and fragile
like the first frost on blades of still green
autumn grass, an early end to seasons
of wonder and wide-eyed sunlight,
hailstorm love that only the young can
imagine and the old can close their eyes
and forget in all their wisdom, a skill
we don’t yet possess, trapped as
we are between the words we know
to write and the ones we’ll never get to read,
the world having taken them away
to save us from the worst of the coming night