The stage constructed so a spotlight

would pinpoint the solitary mouth: lips 

and teeth splayed in an opening stitched 

in seamless black fabric that made a wall

before Billie Whitelaw, hidden from sight

and bound in harness to bear the hour-long

cyclone of words. Beckett’s monologue

cost her dearly in spasms and cramps, 

myriad bruises, even blistered hands

from gripping the rack. Yet she’d laugh

to talk of Not I,  how the maestro writhed

at infelicities in delivery, if a pause went awry

as her voice let elide semi-colon or dash

or mistook one for another, god forbid.

I thought of you as I heard her speak,

though I’ve heard your voice almost

never. Pen pal, foreign correspondent

across years and miles, flight

of fancy gives you the mouth and mind

of the unseen actress behind that screen.

Known and adored by handwritten scores,

a hundred airborne letters that might

just as well have gone astray as kites

let swirl and glide at the outer stretch

of twine sometimes disappear

into invisible sky. In the mail

your frequent letter arrived with bright

stamps and blurred postmark, as though

funneled by miraculous chute or carried

quick by clever Hermes, if not Cupid. Here,

see the box of epistles from two decades,

a comedy of correspondences we did

did not share in person, the hilarity

of mishaps and breakthroughs, days and nights

recorded in scribbled running account

one Scorpio to another, alter egos elusive

as a child’s imagined elf. But, wait: could two

confidantes so faithful as doppelgängers

survive the climax of meeting face to face,

or would both mirrors shatter at the sight,

collision of each parallel universe

with its ineluctable match, its mate?

No — more likely, at the instant

of greeting, we’d split with glee in spite

of exaltation, our solemnity as slight

as a streak of ink on unlined foolscap.

In truth, I’m not sure we could tolerate

the surprise: side by side, with spouse and child.

If I’d never learned that antique habit, to write

down my thoughts and dreads and secret pursuits

then seal them up in an envelope to fly by hook

or crook through slots and chambers, down

conveyor belts and ramps, up elevators

and into mailbags, I’d never have known

this spring of indispensable laughter, an ally

inside me, friend fashioned of light.