Mail

I get letters.
I got one from Love,
a sweet almanac,
signed we miss you.
I thought I'd been in touch.

A letter from the well of Sadness
asked for a donation of
as many tears as I could spare,
but I kept them inside,
for the funeral of my next cat.

Later, one from the company of Death
arrived registered to me,
a bill I could not pay, nor fix,
and from it cannot turn away
until one uneventful eve,
it will finally come due.

Last month the Firmament dropped me a line,
in hand-lettered script,
leaning lightly in the box.
I'd been invited to write
a screenplay for the Upanishads.

And so I read them a thousand times,
a thousand times a thousand,
and scripted the journey to the door
behind the heart of space.
Yet I sit uneasy and to some extent undone,
for every writer knows the self is
too painful to cast.