You are so very fortunate to have those memories. I never knew my grandparents on either side. My mother passed away a few years ago, although my father tells me that I remind him of her. I have her hair and eyes, her temperament. Not a day passes in which I do not think of her. You will probably consider me foolish, but at night when I cannot sleep, I talk to her, sharing my problems and little triumphs of the day. I would like to think that she is proud of me…
I am certain she is…I am rereading Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Do you like to read the old books? There was a copy tucked onto a shelf in my bedroom, and I could not resist opening it.
Re
-reading Spenser? My! You did not lie about being hard-working and determined. Yet surely you garnered enough sermons on virtue and goodness the first time through. A second heart-felt reading would undoubtedly elevate you to the level of saintliness fit for a vicar! I tease in good-natured fun, having enjoyed many hours reading Spenser…many,
many
hours. (Unless you are a vicar. In which case I give my sincerest apologies.)
P.S. – I dearly hope you are not a vicar.
I am the furthest thing from a man of the Church, as you would notice the moment you saw me. I am somewhat unnerved to hear how good of an education you must possess to have read Spenser—and understood it. You will catch me out now for a lack of a formal education and will see through my façade to label me what I am…a simple man to whom fate has either been amusingly capricious or incredibly cruel. It is too soon to tell either way.
Well…as long as you are not a vicar.
WITH EVERY NEW DAY, a new note…
Fall is my favorite time of year. The poets say that it is a dying time, but how wrong they are! Nature’s bounty in all its goodness, the labors of a hard-worked summer finally bearing fruit, the crackle of frost and change in the air…Can you feel it?
If I knew where you lived, I would bring you a basket filled with apples and pears, chestnuts and figs, even a small pumpkin—and I would place a new journal on top so that you could write your own poems and prove all those other poets wrong.
My poetry is lacking in…well,
everything
. I lack the wit of Chaucer, the depth of Shakespeare, the allegory of Milton…
Not with your perceptions of the world. Did you not only a few days ago describe the blue morning haze over the fields at dawn so vividly that I felt the chill of the damp dew? You will have to try much harder to convince me that you lack a poet’s soul.
Ode to a Country Field (Mouse)
