Letter To A Friend
shared by Susan Haley
Most who’ve read my work or know me well, know that my first love is Poetry. Since old enough to hold a pencil, I’ve uttered my deepest feelings through the lines of a poem. What began as simple nursery rhyme, evolved into a personality of its own. Then, a ray of light, the hue of a rainbow, shone into my life at a time the metaphorical rooms basked only in darkness and shadows. The light had a name, Bob Delany. He taught Creative Writing at UCLA and he was a retired airline pilot. He also wrote several screenplays and lived amidst the tarnished glitter of Hollywood.
It would require another book to divulge all the facets of our unique relationship, the one man who was able to penetrate the walls I’d built around my mind and my heart after losing my husband. Suffice it to say here, that what follows was written by Bob and is what inspired me to make the leap from poetical verse to poetical prose. It’s why his name adorns my book cover. If not for him, Rainy Day People would not exist. He was the energy that carried me through its creation, patiently taught me how to write dialogue. I’d never written a line of dialogue in my life. He passed on before he could see it in print, so it wears his name. I have never had the experience of reading a more beautiful and talented gathering of words on a page than what follows. This was but an email. An email!
“Letter To A Friend”
By Robert Delany
Yes, lucky you are, not for where you live but for how you see. I was just taking some photos of my desk, why I don’t know. I got to looking at the clutter, the pennies piled up for change I always forget to take. The post-it note with all the birthdays on it sticking from a drawer like a forgotten yellow sheet on yesterday’s wash line. Earlier, I was playing with my old pilot’s circular slide rule, trying to remember how the damn thing worked, and couldn’t. I thought of all the airports we’d seen together, all the storms, all the adventure. It lies abandoned now on a faded flight map, a relic.
I look up my dictionary and thesaurus stacked like withered leaves one atop the other on this old rolltop, and wonder why I don’t know all the words in them, having used them so much over the years. I had come to trust those words when I realized I could bend them into almost any shape I wanted, and with that trust, became a writer. In the beginning was the Word, and the word was . . . any dream I wished.
My eyes fall to the wooden chess set, a gift from one son years ago that adorns one end of the desk top. I ask myself why it is unplayed. And to the clay angel, a more recent gift, an angel reading a book and I’m curious as to why I haven’t noticed before now, how it fits this setting of books, memories, clutter and ghosts.
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Did you know that I have one of those cups people use to stack pens and things in and have ten sharp pencils sitting in it. All waiting to be asked. How odd, putting pencils into a cup next to a computer screen. How I bought them on impulse a few months ago, and how much pleasure I still get from their scratching. It’s because when I pick one up, I have nature in my hand which flows through my fingers to the paper, wood meeting wood. Past meeting present.
I am yet again in 6th grade with that pencil, far removed from the calamity that was to become my life. I am lying before the fireplace when in 2nd grade, drawing away, perhaps with this same pencil reincarnated so I can tell you about it years later on this machine of plastic that runs on oil. And but for the communication it offers us, offers little else. Yes, no computer speaks of autumn like a pencil, no CD sings like spring, no whirr or click-k-k even remotely compares to the whirr of a hummingbird or the click-k-k of a katydid high in a tree when I was too young to know what it was, and was struck dumb by the sound. I wax remorseful, it seems. Perhaps that’s why I took the pictures of this small oaken desk and the lifetime of memories that rest upon it. The memories are safe on film.
Pickles is asleep perched atop the sleeper couch, his favorite ‘nest’. We have just played catch the bird for the innnth time today and he is tired. I watch him as he leaves this world and enters his, eyelash flutter signaling his arrival. He will soon be off in his field of dreams chasing things, as cats do. Suddenly comes the bell signaling I have just gone off line interrupting the adventure between the cat and I.
I look at the error message. I look at the cat. I look at the pencils and thank whoever one thanks that I have seen the wonder side of life. The one of wood smoke and tall trees. The one where a day took a week and a week took forever. I reluctantly click the error message and pump the oil into the plastic, recovering from my reverie and going back into the cold reality of our online life among the corpses of what could be. And the pencils wait. Like jilted lovers, they wait. Indeed . . .
Indeed.
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Susan Haley is the published author of two books, a Children’s E-book, an award winning poet, several articles on networking, the copy editor and book reviewer for Pepper Tree Press Publishing and book reviewer for AME Marketing out of San Diego. She also contributes a column to “The Florida Writer” the official magazine of the Florida Writers Association, of which she is Facilitator for the Sarasota County Chapter. The audio version of her novel “Rainy Day People” was awarded runner-up Finalist in the 2008 Indie Excellence National Book Awards. She also contributes a variety of editorials and excerpts of her work to various E-zines and newsletters and local papers. |
Thanks for sharing this experience Susan... J. Wolf
