Talking Back

I thought that

talking to photographs

of dear departed

was the last desperate act

of a senile mind

never realizing that

people locked away in their heads

often have nowhere else to turn.

I always dreamed about a

captive audience to receive

my unprotected thoughts

so wrote this fellow

whose poem had been so

poignant. He responded

saying I'd been the

only one to answer

the silent echo of his need

behind bars of steel.

Letters chatted back and forth

and one stranger whose body

was a prisoner

communed with another

whose head was also

that way. He wrote

wistfully of memory

of birds winging forests

and his incarcerated

birthday celebration.

In the last letter he

asked me to wish him luck

getting ready to put on kneepads

go before his parole board.

Looks like he's no longer

sending letters in search

of captive company. Guess

he doesn't need me anymore.

Wonder now if photographs

ever appear to talk back.

c.1979