Short letters.

Dear Monday,

There was a moment when you were blank with promise. Then a meeting request. And another meeting request, and another. Suddenly, your middle was all full of meetings, and you were thus like any other day.

What was there to do, but succumb to that meeting-ful middle and therefore not do anything else worth mentioning?

Slothfully,

htms

______________

Dear Submissions,

I have just blown you a kiss and sent you off. In this metaphor, you are on a swift-moving boat, wending your manuscript-y way to wherever manuscripts go--hell? an alien land? another planet?--whence editors will hail me from afar in a few months. "Hey!" they'll say. "Hey you! Poet!"

I will cup my hand to my ear so that I can hear them a little better.

"Someone else besides you won the competition! But we value your manuscript highly! Unfortunately we can't publish all the good work we receive!"



I guess it's not really a metaphor, but

Good luck,

htms

_________________

Dear York,

As I understand it, you have a medieval wall. Parts of the wall are Roman, even. And there's a killer minster. And other stuff massively historical, dating back to William the Conqueror and the Vikings.

In the larger region--although I admit, I have little sense of what is "a great way off" or "quite close" or "not likely, not in the same day!"--there is the Yorkshire Dales National Park, where there are dales, apparently, which I am still trying to understand the nature of. There's also the North York Moors National Park, where there are moors, and also historic trains, ruined abbeys, etc.

I like just saying these words: "medieval wall." "minster." "dales." "moors." "ruined abbeys."

York, I want to see you so much it hurts. Even though, as my daughter points out, for people who actually live among them, one ruined abbey or medieval wall is the same as another. I know that you will not disappoint me, because I'm just like that. A medieval wall makes me unreasonably happy. I will take a thousand pictures of you, York and environs.

I hope you are as exciting to my traveling companions. And perhaps that you have an excellent candy shop or bakery or both, to soothe anyone who finds medieval walls and ruined abbeys a little bit of a cliche.

Fervently,

htms