Six years ago, in the fertile belly of pandemic
spring, you were inside looking out.
The street was quiet, no traffic, bar a delivery van,
the driver masked and gloved,
as were the single walkers, with or without dogs.
Not even an aeroplane in the sky.
The sun shone, flowers bloomed, but you wilted
in the stifled isolation of keeping safe.
Inside the walls warped, windows were eyes,
and the chair in the corner stayed empty.
Words poured off the page. Scooping them up,
you pasted them back on, like poison pen letters to yourself.
This year, you are sitting in the empty chair, wondering
what else the world can throw at you,
and if the war on the other side of the world
will be coming to a place near you
some time soon.
Kim M. Russell, 2nd April 2026
This Thursday at the dVerse Poets Pub we are meeting the bar with Laura, and letters in a poem. She quotes these famous words from Robert Browning’s ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’, a poem I learned by heart at school:
“Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there”
which she says reads like a letter to self, of home sickness and a longing to return.
She gives examples of letters in poems by Anne Sexton, Matilda Bethem, Linaa Pastan and Thomas James. I especially love Linda Pastan’s ars poetica poem ‘Prosody 101’.We are writing either verse epistles or prose poetry epistles, “addressing them (directly or indirectly) to self, to friend or foe, family or stranger, someone dead or living, to a pet or even an abstraction”, while keeping in mind that a “letter poem is never addressed to just its recipient, but always meant to be overheard by a third person, a future reader.”
writing in north norfolk 
you have filled that emptiness with a great stash pf wonderings. And I wish I had written this!!
“Words poured off the page. Scooping them up,
you pasted them back on, like poison pen letters to yourself.”
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Thank you very much, Laura.
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filling the once empty chair, has there been a reversal of roles? not quite it seems. both pandemic and war foster fear, the greatest threat to our existence. great write kim.
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Thank you, Eric.
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Yes, it was a time of reflections and walking alone most of the time. I remember watching spring working from home.
spring, you were inside looking out. sigh
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As the world throws another existential crisis at us, this timely epistle to yourself expresses what many of us feel, the loss of all those comfortable “certainties” we grew up with, peace, feminism, health and relative wealth – where are they now and “what more can the world “what else the world can throw at you”…
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It’s bewildering, Andrew. I was hoping for a peaceful ending.
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Wallace Stevens said poetry resists reality almost successfully — a literate defeat which projects an equally strong inner reality. Or tries to. Love the way this letter to the pandemic self sums the endless capituations and negotiations we have with the world as it is. We can’t but lose — totally, in the end — but our humanity is there and essentially where th poetry is, too. Sure helps to remember that these awful days.
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Kim, it’s good, but not easy, to have such conversations with ourselves. We’ve been through a lot these past few years. Not fair we’ll probably be going through more 😦
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