Letter to Donald Hall
by Lori Levy

All evening I curled up with your poems,
letters to a dead wife: “Without.”
You showed me Jane–
her daffodils and her leukemia;
how she died bald and incontinent
in your black and gold painted bed
in the old farmhouse,
Wilmot, New Hampshire;
how Gus, the dog, still brings you
her white slipper.
I went to sleep with your words,
dreamt of terrorists, guns, Jerusalem:
the old nightmare, the cold-sweat chase
in the darkness–where I almost died.


“Letter to Donald Hall,” was published by the online website/blog Storyteller Review, on March 27, 2024.



 

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