ALL MY LOVE, JULIA

David Spicer

“My dearest Scott,

I would spend ordinary

days with you, thirty years

of them and thirty more.

Your friendship is my

life poem.”

Each time I read the inscription, Scott,

I wonder if you felt the same way

she did, whether you brought her irises

on an overcast day when she seemed

like a blue jay flying into a window,

if you gave her a keep-forever gift

like the Billy Collins book

she wrote in as she thought of you.

I wonder why it’s in my mailbox

years after the birthday

or private dinner, or whenever

it was she presented it,

after I paid Amazon three

dollars. Whether you liked it

enough to keep or thought

your friend insincere as a sales clerk.

Or did you lose the book on a park bench

after reading for an hour?

Maybe someone stole it, thinking

Ballistics might discuss bullets.

Or the person you loaned it to

sold it or donated it to a library sale.

The kind reason may be you died:

your estate sold it plus the watch

Julia gave you to honor the time

you shared. Whatever the reason,

I own this book with her message

in red. It reminds me of the collection

of Neruda love poems a friend

inscribed forty years ago:

it vanished during a party,

lost in my memory until now,

as I wait to receive the answer

to the letter I sent her.