WOLF POEM

Blood Letters

If only you would read them

Photo by oviul maruf on Unsplash

Once upon a time
I bled letters
onto paper
one slow red letter
at a time

You’d think these
blood letters
would end up red
or scarlet or thereabouts
as shiny little witnesses
to my inconsolable musing
but this little-known law
of nature intervened:
blood, especially
on white paper
now yellowing
once long-time dry
ends up a deep rust
verging on black

So, looking at that
long-ago bled poem now
these many years later
(I found it in a drawer
underneath an equally
forgotten book of hopes)
it looks like I painted it
letter by letter
with a fine black brush

Not so