POSTCARDS

THE POSTCARDS

Billy Collins the poet wrote a sonnet

about the travels of postcards

eloquently, amusingly he let us travel with them

as well as in another poem

where his angels become mailmen reading our postcards

as they walk up to our rundown mailboxes,

and I sit by my bed remembering all the postcards

that have come and gone in my life,

little histories in a line or two

hints of cobblestone streets in Europe

or asking me to walk with love on a beach in Hawaii

a rushed few sentences reminding of the novel I’m to write

yes little photos of travels dropped in the melting pot of the past,

on my wall, tilted with time, is a postcard with Albert Camus’s face

he stares out of the shadows of what has passed

cigarette hanging from his young lips as if his words were ready to fly

from them to paper to our hands, an almost postcard, an almost friend.