September 2017
Penelope Moffet
penstemon1@gmail.com
I once published many freelance articles in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere, but left journalism for poetry more than 20 years ago, finding other ways to earn a living. Something of a hermit for a long while, in the last few years I've been seeking more contact with other poets. Literary journals that have recently published my work include The Rise Up Review and Levure Litteraire. I have one book of poems, Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, 1995).

3 A.M. LETTER


Some things should not be written.
If pinned in prose or poem
the bird may not return to herald morning.
And he doesn’t. Some things
should be taken in like breath
and like breath released. A fly pauses
on the windowscreen, rubs his back leg
up the inside of his wing, acrobatic
grooming or a meditative scratch seen by chance,
seen by hanging in the pause between
what one fictitious person tells another.
The fly can be described. There will always
be more flies. There will not be
another you I can’t afford to lose.
And so I hesitate to name what can’t be named,
as the ancient Jews refused to voice
their word for God. I would not call you God.
But there is something in your eyes and touch
that touches on religion as I know it, which is to say
immersion in the sweaty fly-filled wind-licked present
song sparrows may visit if we’re lucky,
if we sense when to speak and when to hold from speech,
what to name and what to breathe ineffable.
“3 a.m. Letter” was first published in my book Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, 1995)
​© 2017 Penelope Moffet
Editor's Note:  If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF