there in the ink is the shadow of your hand

In those days, we wrote letters. 

We licked a stamp 

and placed it in the corner of the envelope. 

The stamp cost 13 cents. 

I still have a letter you wrote me 

the day after a snowstorm almost fifty years ago. 

I can still see you making a path 

through the snow to the birdfeeder, 

the scribble of sunflower seed on the ground. 

As you sat at your desk 

you could watch the birds through the window— 

chickadees, juncos, purple finches. 

In the spring, you wrote, the ground 

would be littered with the empty husks of seeds. 

You have been dead for thirty years, 

but there in the ink is the shadow of your hand, 

and sealed behind the stamp, 

your tongue. 

 

[Rob Hardy, ‘Letter’, from Shelter in Place]