I want to inscribe a letter to you in the way that you are not here;
letters that speak like cave drawings that wholesome kind of absence;
lasting and notched as jagged notes carved into a trunk or bench.

When you left I climbed back in the wreck of the boat of what I was doing,
and kept on seeing the unspeakable loneliness of every thing breathing;
shadows of bodies passing through the sun on water or under trees.

I saw how light plays at the edges of eyes to tell a story of how to survive;
and there are times when something that feels like trust is dropping,
and it is like bread being broken over the kitchen table.

It is in the places where I can remain that kindness of quiet and still,
where I find what I am for you and you are so freely for me;
we are lighthouses for each other as when the day fades out to the West.

And Tamar Yoseloff wrote this of
dear W S Graham in a letter
after he died:

He was a poet that lit up
his realm of darkness;
and some times
that is all
we can
ever
do.