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Not thinking Is this a mistake, to begin? nor Will I regret this? Normally a guarded woman, she'd given in to impulse. Hadn't considered any future beyond the gesture of an hour.
His name was Woodson Johnston, Jr.-"Woody." He signed this name with a thick-nubbed pen in black ink with a flair that suggested he wished to think well of himself.
Where'd he get her home address? A directory of poets and writers?
Please except my poetry as a gift. I love your poetry truely. Even if you dont have time to read my writings. Even if you dont have a feeling for it. I understand!
He was an inmate at Kansas State Penitentiary for Men in Fulham, Kansas. His number was AT33914. He'd sent her a packet of poems and a few pages of a prison diary. She was a poet, translator, part-time college teacher and divorced mother of a fifteen-year-old son. For the past seven years, since the divorce, she'd lived in Olean, New York.
A snowswept November. Swirling funnels of snow like vaporous human figures dancing across the snow-crust, then turning ragged, blown apart. She'd opened the packet, quickly read Johnston's poems that had been published in a small smudgily printed magazine with a clever name-In Pen. The diary had been photocopied from a laboriously typed manuscript without margins. There were frequent misspellings and typographical errors and Johnston had written in corrections in a neat, crimped hand. Her heart was moved to pity, seeing these corrections. As if they mattered! But of course they mattered to the author.
Quickly she read the poems, and reread them. She read the prison diary excerpt. Johnston was talented, she thought. Her pity became sympathy. Impulsively she wrote back to him, just a card. Thank you for your intriguing, original poetry. And your disturbing diary with its vivid details. Mailing off the card, and that was that!
Except: "Woody" immediately wrote back. More poems, and more diary excerpts, and a snapshot of himself. A black man of about thirty-five, with faint Caucasian features, curly dark hair parted on the left side of his head and plastic-framed glasses with lenses so thick they distorted his eyes. "Woody" was smiling hopefully, but his forehead was deeply creased. He...