The Boy Who Wrote Letters

The Boy Who Wrote Letters
One of the biggest mistakes parents can make is to underestimate their children. Children know. They lead secret lives, in which they busily recreate the world. While parents should be available to offer their children guidance, they should also be willing and able to take direction from their children. The degree to which they succeed will be revealed by how well they and their children get along, and the amount of respect each has for the other. The Boy Who Wrote Letters The boy who wrote letters seldom wrote to people. He wrote instead to his dog, and to the birds and trees. He wrote to the old barns he saw when he went for rides with his father, and to retired boxcars half-buried in mounds of dewy chickweed, or overgrown with wild blackberry vines. The letters were short, because they had to fit on tiny scraps of paper, corners of discarded envelopes, and the blank sides of his mother�s grocery lists. The pencils he used were hand-me-down stubs bequeathed him by his father, who wore the pencils out copying rows of numbers into homemade ledgers. As soon as they were written, he�d put the letters in a shoe box. During the summer he was nine, he wrote so many letters that he kept the box with him from breakfast until bedtime. Through the kitchen window, his mother could see him on the front porch or in the yard, always writing, his pencil devoured by a white, eager fist. At night, after his bath, he�d hold his box of letters while his mother sat on the edge of his bed and talked. After she turned out the light, he�d put the box on the night stand, then drift off to sleep. His expression was so satisfied, his breathing so unencumbered, that his mother often stayed in the room for an hour or more, just to listen, watch, and dream. By the time school began that fall, the shoe box was full. The tired lid, like an old man�s hat, had creases and a bulge. Without warning, it would pop off at the corners, allowing some of the letters to escape and flutter to the ground. Surprised, but never annoyed, the boy would pick them up, read them, and tuck them away. He didn�t write letters while he was at school, but he thought them, and carried them home in his head every afternoon. His mother gave him another shoe box, and helped him tie a string around the one that was full. His father gave him another pencil. And so the boy who wrote letters wrote letters. A few weeks later, his father died. As best she could, his mother tried to explain their loss. She said something about his father�s heart, but he didn�t understand. Then she said how much his father had loved them, and how he�d always meant to give them the things they�d wanted but couldn�t have. The boy who wrote letters wrote letters. Then, one day, he stopped. It was a long time before his mother noticed. When she finally did, she asked her son why he didn�t write anymore. The boy started to cry. He didn�t know how to tell her it was because his last stubby pencil was gone. Note: Poems, Slightly Used, a growing collection of work first published in my blog, Recently Banned Literature, can be found here. POETRY COLLECTIONS IN PRINT Available from Cosmopsis Books of San Francisco *Winter Poems* by William Michaelian ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 US $11.95; $8.95 at Cosmopsis Books 52 pages. 6x9. Paper. Includes one drawing. San Francisco, June 2007 *Signed, numbered & illustrated copies* *Winter Poems* displays the skills and abilities of Mr. Michaelian at their most elemental level, at the bone. Wandering amidst a barren world, a world scraped bare, he plucks the full moon like fruit from the winter sky, goes mad and befriends a pack of hungry wolves, burns his poems to keep warm. He is a flake of snow, a frozen old man, a spider spinning winter webs. Spring is only a vague notion of a waiting vineyard, crocuses, and ten-thousand babies. The author is alone, musing, reflecting, at times participating. But not quite alone, for he brings the lucky reader along. I�ve been there, to this winter world, and I plan to go back. � John Berbrich, Barbaric Yawp *Another Song I Know � Short Poems* by William Michaelian ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 US $13.95; $10.95 at Cosmopsis Books 80 pages. 6x9. Paper. Includes Author�s Note. San Francisco, June 2007 *Signed, numbered & illustrated copies* *Another Song I Know* is a delightful collection of brief, resilient poems. Reading them, one by one by one, is like taking a walk through our common everyday world and suddenly hearing what the poet hears: the leaves, a coffee cup, chairs � and yes, even people, singing their songs of wisdom, sweetness, and light. *� Tom Koontz, Barnwood* poetry magazine**	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. �� Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. �� Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author�s Note Background Notebook A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let�s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts *Poetry, Notes & Marginalia:* Recently Banned Literature Collected Poems by William Michaelian A Larger Life Monastery of Psalms Revelation Friends (includes French translation) Summer of Dreams Hunger Is It His Coat? Forty Days, Forty Nights Papa�s Song (clam chowder blues) The Pilgrim�s Way A Christmas Wish The Teacher The Literary Awakening of America The Healer The Enigmatic Child What Happened to God Reading Tristram Shandy A Prefix of Obscure Meaning He Knows My Only Friend The World I Know We Do Not Need a Poem Three Short Poems The More We Are Looking For I Hear the Earth What Will I Give You? Great Minds Think Alike The Age of Us All I Met My Spirit Claim Denied Summer Days Greek Peppers Another Hard Day James Joyce Singing How Many Stones? At the Armenian Home The Peace Talks The Eggs of March Armenian Music If Poems Were Days Once Again I Lied Frogs One Last Thing Everywhere I Go Up Here On the Hill Pumpkins Winter View What December Said to January Winter Poems Spring Haiku How to Write a Poem, In Three Lessons The Walls Have Ears Why I Don�t Buy Grapes To French Vanilla and All the Other Flavors It Was Early Morning Haiku Someone�s Mother Fall Questions My Old Black Sport Coat The Clerk and the Windmill Roadside Distress, Part 2 Magical Realism (First Prize) Caf� Poetry Night: Two Poems Short Poem for Spring Short Poem for Summer I Find Him Eating Butterflies For the Sister I Never Had An Absurdist Play The Second Act Essay Of Poets and Other Things
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