The Five Year Poems
The Five Year Poems is a correspondence project we made when Luissa was away visiting friends for a week in Oakland, CA in Fall 2019. The rules for the project were:
+ Write each other a letter in the form of a poem, set five years apart in the future, beginning in the year 2020.
+ Each poem must be inspired by an element of the natural world.
+ The date and location the letters were written must be noted.
This is one in a series of writing projects that we have made since meeting in 2013, most often when we are not together.
These projects are a commitment to each other and our work as writers and artists.
They are the work of regular and transparent communication that connects us and documents our experiences when we are apart.
The form changes with each project. We set new rules and parameters each time we begin, rules that at times can evolve once we are inside of them.
We have written daily haiku, sent photos with captions, written plays and short stories, and composed many poems, including the ones in The Five Year Poems project.
October 14, 2019
THE 2020 POEM
Beacon, NY
Dear Luissa,
The world is burning (part 7)
Fires to the south
Again
I can see them as I drive
Over the Hudson
Like last year
From strong winds and lack of rain
And clumsy hikers
Or maybe just a piece of old glass
Like driving into Kumasi for the first time
In the late afternoon
Or that time we drove to Newark airport and thought the Meadowlands was covered with fog
But it was actually just a truck combusting internally
Suffocating
Even our neighbors
Who treat fire as purifying
Or nostalgic
But pollute our apartment with chemical smoke
So that
Even cedar becomes suspicious
The yellow leaf on my car
A match
Love,
Peter
October 14, 2019
THE 2020 POEM
Oakland, CA
Dear Peter,
somehow time has passed again like it always does i wish it would pass me but it takes me with it and the sky is so blue it’s like a computer’s imagination of blue pixels and clouds a screen saver behind our heads saving the future and we are saved because we’ve figured something out that no one else has figured out yet and that is how what you pay attention to is what becomes you and so we pay attention to each other’s skin and the trails of stone and flesh and the seasons and i want to imagine what comes next but for today it’s enough (I think) that the air gets so cool at night and that there is a breeze and a bay and a purple flower that makes me think of the even numbers and the balance of your lips against my lips and time almost doesn’t even matter except when I remember every five seconds that i love you and a spark goes off under my skin
Love,
Luissa
October 15, 2019
THE 2025 POEM
Oakland, CA
Dear Peter,
I definitely don’t have my period anymore.
I am fifty two or three.
I am me, but a more pointed version.
(Or is it softer, blurrier?)
There is hope but not of genetics, per se.
Other kinds of legacy.
There are less birds but now there is more sky.
You can’t have everything.
I walk by the rivers. Indian. Hudson.
I can feel the way the water makes deep etchings under the surface. I am older now.
There are seasons to this and you can’t see them until they’ve passed.
I am not a child.
I am a woman, sort of and maybe but also not. To change takes time.
Love,
Luissa
October 15, 2019
The 2025 Poem
Sloatsburg, NY
Dear Luissa,
The moon is still there
A little redder, perhaps
Over the mountain
And hiding in your hair
Even the rains
Pearls singly-whispering
Can only make it
Glisten
As it brightens the bedroom
On a sneaky early evening
Because we will always have those
Love,
Peter
October 16, 2019
The 2030 Poem
Mahwah, NJ
Dear Luissa,
There seem to be so many more kinds of acorns here
Than I remember from New Jersey
on cool autumn days walking up concrete steps
The satisfying squish as my leather-soled
Shoes opened up the fruit
Robbing the squirrel of employment
The shirakashi that line the streets
Of Tokyo have different acorns.
Softer, without the crunch.
They get quickly swept away.
Even after two cycles I still don’t know where they disappear to
Perhaps to some hydroponic tree farm
Or maybe a squirrel retirement home
Love,
Peter
October 17, 2019
The 2030 Poem
Oakland, CA
Dear Peter,
oh, I’m getting forgetful now is it age or
what day is it now
one day late or still early and the sky is dark here
i woke up gasped remembering what i was supposed to do
a thing i had planned to do and wanted to do and i even took notes
in a museum about the color of the trees
in the painting i was going to tell you about
i am always taking notes in my mind for you
the docent had to give me a pencil because pen can leave a stain on the art and the walls and i know that but i was hoping he wouldn’t see my pen because i really wanted to use pen to make a deeper mark in my book because my eyes (as you know) are not always working so well either and the edges are blending
and one of the paintings was called churning the sea of milk it was about immortality
people were on a boat frantic the waves were high and wind they were sideways they were working hard to move the ocean in unnatural ways so that they may live
this is one day late but please know my heart wrote one hundred poems for you yesterday and will write one million more today about the leaves that are changing on the trees (even here) and about the sunset last night which was orange and fire or about the way the hills come up in the distance and always make me wonder what is there
Love,
Luissa
October 17, 2019
The 2035 Poem
Beacon, NY
Dear Luissa,
I couldn’t help but laugh
When the wind knocked your drink off the
Flat arm of your deck chair this afternoon
The clang of the metal bottle making us both jump
The quick relief that there was no explosion
And no glass to clean
It woke me up
From a dream I was having about the sea
The sound of waves
a long ago Indialantic hotel balcony
With a forgotten hurricane somewhere far off the coast
And we stood naked to the elements
When I pick up the bottle I return it with a kiss
on your bare shoulders
Open to the sun and the wind
Soft and smooth and naked again
Love,
Peter
October 17, 2019
The 2035 Poem
Oakland, CA
Dear Peter,
Remember that double rainbow?
Beautiful. Over the mountain. At dusk. Silver sky and yellow flashes. Golden air and as wide as the sky. The end kept moving. Lucky. So lucky.
We tried to take pictures but it wasn’t ever going to work. Better, in the end, to just remember.
Love,
Luissa
October 18, 2019
The 2040 Poem
Beacon, NY
Dear Luissa,
Feeling like the Hudson
Is finally swimmable
The geese are gone
But the swings are still there
A miracle of iron and engineering
And the glee of thousands of children
And yours too
on that birthday jaunt that I captured on video
And looped with Barbara and Eric singing
Joyously for the special occasion
Love,
Peter
October 19, 2019
The 2040 Poem
Oakland, CA
Dear Peter,
the older I get the more i want
to feel your weight on me the bones
of our bodies need warmth
this is what
is called building a life
from where i am anywhere
with you is a good place the moisture
of fog on my cheeks is the softness
of water on early grass
if you are close give me
your hand it is the most important hand
there has ever been
it’s the only hand in history
Love,
Luissa
October 19, 2019
The 2045 Poem
Beacon, NY
Dear Luissa,
At 72
the fall leaves still turn yellow
And cover the earth
Love,
Peter
October 19, 2019
The 2045 Poem
Oakland,CA
Dear Peter,
if you drive up high enough you can be inside a cloud and my whole life has been a cloud since i met you
Love,
Luissa
October 20, 2019
The 2050 Poem
Beacon, NY
Dear Luissa,
Strange Currencies
The fog doesn’t really lift
It slowly evaporates
As the sun gets stronger
Over Storm King
Making everything a little blurry
Except these words:
You will be mine all the time
Love,
Peter
October 20, 2019
The 2050 Poem
Oakland, CA
Dear Peter,
In the morning, it is freezing here
then
the sun comes up
bright
hot
then it all cools down
again in the evening
with a gray
breeze.
That’s something I love about this place
how the cycles are so clear.
I love how the layers
are needed
and then they’re not
and then they are
again.
I love how it is
morning
and then
it is night.
I love how
it’s almost time
to come home
to you.
Love,
Luissa
October 21, 2019
The 2055 Poem
Mahwah, NJ
Dear Luissa,
An Autumn Imaginary
So many carcasses on the roadside
Leaves on the windshield
Too heavy for the wind to clean them off
And me too tired to brush them
Life most evident in its ubiquitous endings
Love,
Peter