When I Am an Envelope, White #10
I will keep a space. A flat pocket
my gift to give, obvious
and secret.
Consider the seashell with a twist:
exactly where it spirals
into itself cannot be
completely seen.
I’ll hold out hope that someone
will mail the sea.
Will it be the same,
what the waves write in my shell?
From a tunnel of pearl, the ever-roar
releasing gently.
When I Am a Letter
It will be proper pleasure
and I am prepared
to be black ink, self-saying.
I, too, will be the page:
forest after white
forest wandering
within edges.
There will flit the chickadee,
whistle and song
of handwriting, black-capped
and common.
There will crook the stream,
sunlit in spots,
a surfacing vein.
But in this forest, letter
alive, there will flick
the ravenous,
the unraveling.
The tree struck by lightning
will strike me too:
vulnerable and solid.
Charred and stark and upright.
I will write with that char,
left-handed as the heart
which often smears
what it has to say.
What Should Open
The letters were written, each in black roller ball ink
on legal paper, the long yellow sheets like sunshine
vined with shade. They began, each, Dear Dad,
and sprouted into hedgerows, the handwritten
voice that carries on brimming, an expert gardener
who’s walked the grounds for decades, pruners in left back
pocket, wheeling the blue wheelbarrow, the kneeling pad stuck with
pine needles. Orange bucket and dandelion digger. Gloves for wet,
for dry, for thorns; the small and large rakes.
The letters were delivered, each to the mailbox of the father,
each sealed by the son’s certain tongue. The father touched them
at least once and tossed them in the Impala’s trunk, which, until
mail arrived again, stayed shut. Shut as the eye intent
on not seeing. The bud that shoots up from the rosebush in November.
The stem declares itself ruddy and strong. Hope crafts the petals
yellow. Then the frost, impartial with its cover, its arrests.
What should open appears clenched.
The letters were discovered, each by the writer,
the son, at the house now and cleaning: the complete go through,
the emptying. The muted father needs help to live.
It’s time to move. Another unmarked box and here they are, each envelope
crisp and slim as if young, which he was when he wrote them, the son,
each trembling with memory, with questions.
Does he give them again to his father? The tow truck
releases the dumpster. This box as weightless as the one
in the greenhouse: packet upon packet of intact, outdated seed.
Editor's note: (the above poem was published in a slightly smaller font to preserve Roullard's line breaks)
Lisa Roullard’s poetry has recently appeared in Sugar House Review, Atlanta Review, and Hawaii Pacific Review. Her work has also appeared on buses in Boise, Idaho, as part of Poetry in Motion. As often as possible she walks in the rain.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I write about what asserts itself, what doesn’t let go. Sometimes it’s something I see on a walk—a trumpet vine overtaking a power pole, for example, and sometimes it’s a phrase that rises up in my mind. One day that phrase was “the mailman in the forest.” Thus began the writing of poems exploring the world of mail. The tangible aspects of letters—stationary, stamps, return address labels—as well as the possibilities of correspondence captivated me as a child. Who might write me a letter? What would it say? When would it get here? The potential for surprise was delightful, plus there was a person dedicated to the pickup and delivery of mail as well as a special box to house it in, a special truck to carry it. Perhaps I liked the realm of mail because I could participate in it equally even though I was a child.