E-mailing Poetry With Another Copywriter

After years of writing words
For those I've rarely met,
Of shouting songs at walls
Shelved high with books,
Eva's words take space
Among my half-formed thoughts,
Tossed like seeds on frozen dirt.

I'll reply verse for verse:
Proustian memories silenced
From my own discarded past,
Now verse shrinks life to image.
What better way for me to find
Some counterpoint in
Eva's world and mine?

Ours: inner voices where
Souls make sense of life
As outer selves write words
For profit and for fame—
Scaffolding for hire,
Public dreams displayed,
Billboard messages at night.

Reading poems from Eva's life,
So like mine but not my own,
Reveals our interwoven themes
Not in story but in voice:
Whispered worlds: verse shapes
Suffering into grace, grace sparks
Ideas electrified in flight.

If I moulder, dreams deferred,
I'll still make time for Eva's song.
In our singing comes the chorus --
New life resounds with old:
Verse, response, verse response
In sequence, bold new poems are born
The common voice redeems its own.

--Elisabeth-- October 1, 2007