From LETTERS/Jonathan Minton

This letter begins with a blinded god, his golden mask.

Someone is drowning in the dark. Someone is speaking as a ghost.

When the language is private, I recover an image: wet rock, a red canyon.

When spoken, you appear as the girl with her bare, white shoulders.

This letter begins as a sound from a king's mouth or globe.

You stand before the cave of its origin where a heart

of string hangs from a map on the wall.

It marks the spot where you will leave. It marks this new kingdom.

This letter begins with locusts and wild honey.

It feeds the mouth of the hermit. He is clothed

in a thousand little words like this. It is a murmur. It is a state.

But it will fade as you fade. It is not the same as pain.

This letter begins as something once held as belief

like water or the fossilized bones of a fish.

This letter begins not as a fathom but a gate that swings open or shut.

There was never a horse, its head bending low to drink.