Found Letter

By Joshua Weiner Joshua Weiner

What makes for a happier life, Josh, comes to this:

Gifts freely given, that you never earned;

Open affection with your wife and kids;

Clear pipes in winter, in summer screens that fit;

Few days in court, with little consequence;

A quiet mind, a strong body, short hours

In the office; close friends who speak the truth;

Good food, cooked simply; a memory that’s rich

Enough to build the future with; a bed

In which to love, read, dream, and re-imagine love;

A warm, dry field for laying down in sleep,

And sleep to trim the long night coming;

Knowledge of who you are, the wish to be

None other; freedom to forget the time;

To know the soul exceeds where it’s confined

Yet does not seek the terms of its release,

Like a child’s kite catching at the wind

That flies because the hand holds tight the line.

Biography

Joshua Weiner is the editor of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn (2009), as well as the the author of two books of poems, The World’s Room (2001) and From the Book of Giants (2006). Weiner is the recent recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a Whiting Writers’ Award. He has published poems and prose in Best American Poetry, the Nation, the American . . .

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