Envelopes
I begin to fill an envelope today.
I haven’t decided what to call it—
the “go-ep” maybe.
I do know it will hold a photograph of you,
one of my dead parents when they were middle-aged,
one of my brother, although he won’t talk to me.
Small things
to hold in the waiting room,
put on the table next to the bed, then
see from a respirator.
Yes, I’m getting maudlin—
but I’m fairly sure you won’t be there,
so at the same time
I’m making an envelope for you.
Susan G. Duncan is presently an independent consultant with a performing and visual arts clientele, capping a long career in arts administration. She served as executive director for San Francisco’s long-running Beach Blanket Babylon, the al fresco California Shakespeare Theater, and Grammy-winning ensemble Chanticleer. Her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, The London Reader, The MacGuffin, Soundings East, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Yalobusha Review, among others, as well as in anthologies by Sixteen Rivers Press and Red Claw Press.