Dear one,

I surprise myself: I miss you. Will this letter find you out in the grey cemetery? It's raining tonight, and I'm thinking of you, hoping you've found a warm place among the dripping goldenrod, beneath the deep sweet mat of maple leaves.

The night we finally realized you must leave, I made you a last meal--your favorite. Pouring peanuts into a bowl, Martin laughed at me for grinding them for you, but I knew you'd enjoy it. You never really appreciated my cooking but by golly, I knew you loved peanut butter.

The next morning, leaning over the long black box where you lay, we knew it was time to ease you into the car for our first and last trip with you. The box was so dark, we could barely believe you were inside. The girls wanted to come, but I told them I would describe the moment of your departure, and I vowed to memorize the trees, the way the road curved up toward the skyline, the way we said goodbye to you. I even brought my camera, but it would be to no avail--you left us much too quickly.

We thought it would be a safe place for you, the quiet of the grey stone. From the hill, you can see the whole town with its towers and steeples laid out before you like a sea full of ships. The morning was cool, the sky bright through layers of mist.

We stopped the car and stood around your box for a while. And then we said goodbye, and you were gone in an instant, dissolving into the underbrush. We got back in the car and drove slowly away, and the sky in my rear view mirror filled with illuminated clouds, so bright I stopped the car, jumped out, and watched them, wondering that they could look so much like another world passing over this one.

At home since you've been gone, I miss your face in the evenings, the way you stopped and turned your head as you looked at me. I miss the sudden sound of your entrance when you joined us in a room, the feeling that I was never completely alone with you nearby.

You were such a fastidious, unassuming presence here, dear Merwin, but it always seemed as if you should not be with us. And now you have gone and there are no more Merwins, no shadows of you, as I once thought. You, with your sleek brown face and cunning manners, were one of a kind.

I have to admit, I half hoped that perhaps you had thumbed your considerable nose at us and stuffed the box with a decoy, and that when we reached the cemetery we would suddenly find that it was not you inside, but some impostor, a limp doll or a scrap of blanket. I had faith in you, Merwin, as someone of letters and intellect. But I was mistaken.

I hope this epistle reaches you somehow, Merwin, and I hope that you have not wandered too close to the buildings next to the cemetery hoping for respite. I have heard they are cold-blooded killers there waiting for you and your kind. Much luck, Merwin, and may you have a litter of twenty, twenty times over.

Yours,

K Cockroft, Wazoo Farm