sentences like ships

#18

23 Feb 2025

Dear Shera,

Every time I get a letter in the mail, desire wells up inside me. Reading one letter makes me want to write about hundred. It has always been this way, since I was a small girl sending colored pencil drawings to my grandma and cousins. How is it that a few leaves folded and sealed spark such wonder? It’s as if my creative powers accumulate like a cloud until the storm breaks and my words rain out on the page. And what a joy to find someone who also hankers after letters. Who also dares to put pen to paper and launch sentences like ships out into the world. Writing a letter connects me to something beyond me; by it I take note of sights and sounds and smells and tastes and touch around me. Memories float to mind and inquiries bubble up. I think of a recipient and feel almost as though she is beside me. I invite her into my present turbulence and tumble. I take stock of all the day—or week—or year’s cascading cares and lay them out as though lines in a ledger. Seeing them set down (like ducks in a row) dispels their weight somehow, and I feel lightened. Will the friend I write to hunger for a ladleful of narrative the way I do? Will she swallow up every last crumb and lick the plate?

Because I do. Receiving a letter feels like a holiday. How do you like to celebrate? I sing this song my sister wrote me. Or this song a cousin recently introduced me to. Or this song from my favorite musical. Or I pick a playlist like this one inspired by a tradition Kristen and I call a post office pilgrimage (P.O.P. for short).

Winter is growing late, so often I’ll write letters by the fire. Hunkered amid blankets and books, my daughter across the room working at school, our mugs of tea and coffee near at hand. When the sun shines light pours in through the south windows and scatters prism rainbows over wall and floor. Rain patters on the roof other days, and wind rattles against the panes, and frost traces diamond filigree. There is a quiet solitude at my writing desk in the corner of my bedroom upstairs. With the door shut, I attend to my pages with a stein full of pens and pencils, bottles of ink, and toppling stacks of notepaper on the nearby shelf. I don’t like to play music when I write, but prefer the sound of the prairie—its murmuring wind, rumbling thunder, cooing doves, and trumpeting cranes. Even the ricochet of hunters or whine of snowmobiles fade across the fields and lodge my letters mise-en-scène. Warmer weather brings me out to the porch or patio table or a lawn chair to soak in the sun and smells of summer …at least until bugs or breezes drive me indoors again! If the kitchen’s clean (a rare event), I can’t help but spread journal and stamps out on the tantalizingly wide, smooth surface of the butcherblock island, and perch on a stool to pen my note. Where do you write best?

I’ve found my penpals follow three broad patterns: spontaneous, steadfast, and those who cannot help or hamper being sincerely kindred spirits. There is crossover aplenty between them with the seasons of life, and I want them all. Every one. Each kind calls out another story, poem, prayer, or phrase.

And speaking of…

Oh Shera, aren’t you just over the moon about OUR poetry?! I’d never’ve imagined being part of a collection from @bandersnatchbooks! And illustrated by @abluebirdwilldo! What a merry throng are we!