Friday 4 May 2012

A First Postcard.



I just got home from one of those days doing what I do every day because I have to and I’m tired.

I did the same thing yesterday.

The house is still the same mess it was the day before with all the things waiting to be done, that have to be done, but which I don’t want to do because I have to do them and I have always done them and I’m tired.

So I went and looked in the letter-box.

There was a parcel and a postcard!

I love postcards.

It’s maybe because I’m old fashioned and no one ever sends postcards any more but there is also such a simple, beautiful unnecessity about them..

And they always get a stamp, not a machine post frank-thingy.

Someone has sat at a favourite café, maybe chosen a special pen and written something intimate open for everyone to read if they care to.

But probably no one has, just me.

Some one’s kissed that stamp, or held it in their fingers and softly dabbed it into the centre of a sponge sitting in a bowl of water.

Or perhaps just lightly touched it to the ocean lapping at their feet where they stand.

And some one has looked for a post box in a town they don’t know and which has probably painted it a different colour from the town where they live.

Perfect.

Thank you.

This one is from my daughter who in fact wrote it on a train but the post boxes were red and they are yellow here so I got that bit right, though she is English and probably knows they are red without anyone having to tell her so she probably didn’t spend hours wandering a foreign city wondering why they don’t have any letter-boxes.

It starts –“I am wet, wet, wet, absolutely soaking!”

She’s in England.

Her friend, my friend too, added at the bottom “Send you lot’s of wet kisses.”

Are there any better?

(I love parcels too but this is about postcards).

Today’s is not the first postcard I have received this year -  that honour rests with the one pictured above.

It came a couple of weeks back, travelling far to bring stories and tales unknown ‘till then and with two really beautiful stamps embossed with letters unlike any in my own alphabet.

A foreign window.

Postcard season is OPEN!




3 comments:

Mary said...

Are you kidding? Do you want me to cry everyday? Dylan and Morrison at the Acropolis singing together and pondering redemption?

Foreign Window -- Van Morrison

"I saw you from a foreign window
Bearing down the sufferin' road
You were carryin' your burden
To the palace of the Lord
To the palace of the Lord

I spied you from a foreign window
When the lilacs were in bloom

And the sun shone through your window pane
To the place you kept your books
You were reading on your sofa
You were singin' every prayer
That the masters had instilled in you
Since Lord Byron loved despair
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

And if you get it right this time
You don't have to come back again
And if you get it right this time
There's no need to explain

I saw you from a foreign window
Bearing down the sufferin' road
You were carryin' your burden
You were singing about Rimbaud
I was going down to Geneva
When the Kingdom had been found
I was giving you protection
From the loneliness of the crowd
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord

They were giving you religion
Breaking bread and drinking wine
And you laid out on the green hills
Just like when you were a child
I saw you from a foreign window
You were trying to find your way back home
You were carrying your defects
Sleeping on a pallet on the floor
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord
In the palace of the Lord"

I ask you -- How am I supposed to get through that?

I shall say no more.

Mx

Anonymous said...

cant match that ...
but i love the backdrop of iris
or is it irises
x

popps said...

I reckon it should be Iri (pronounced Irae),