Ode to letters

... Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs ...

— Whitman

I loved them, those letters, from the start. The pull-down slant of each side and cross bar to make the A, first letter of the alphabet and my name.

Later the cursive swoops and sweeps across ruled paper,

letters practiced with force and precision in workbooks under drawings of ant-apple-alligator-angel, held in a claw clasp of fingers that calloused gripping fat blue Ticonderogas.

I even came to love the alphabet’s final one, first letter of my last name, the way Z zigzagged across tracing guides, left to right, downward left slant, left-right again,

even if it was the letter that sentenced me to the end of rows and lines, excluded me from spelling bees I could have easily won with zero-zipper-zebra-zesty-zoo.

Twenty-six letters, their forty sounds, I cherished them all, caught inside the pangram we would write and rewrite and recite: The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.

With a first childhood crush, I added a heart, carved our letters with ballpoints into desks, benches, and bark, dragged them by branches through mud and wet cement.

Today I still delight in those workhorses of language, and the poet’s power to free them across the page.

— Andrena Zawinski

Andrena Zawinski’s new poetry collection “Landings” reflects Pittsburgh and the San Francisco Bay area. Her collection, “Something About,” is a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient, and “Traveling in Reflected Light” received a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry. She also has authored four chapbooks. Ms. Zawinski is features editor for PoetryMagazine.com.