Monday, February 24, 2014

Postcards, E. Ethelbert Miller

Postcards
by E. Ethelbert Miller

When was the last time you mailed a postcard?
  
My mother kept the ones I sent her. My sister mailed them 
back
  
to me after my mother died. I had forgotten I had written
  
so many small notes to my mother. The price of stamps
  
kept changing. I was always mentioning on the back of cards
  
I was having a good time. I can remember the first time
  
I lied to my mother. It was something small maybe the size
  
of a postcard. I went somewhere I was not supposed to go.
  
I told my mother I was at the library but I was with Judy
  
that afternoon. Her small hand inside my hand.
  
I was beginning to feel something I knew I would never write
  
home about.
 

About This Poem 
"My mother died on November 28, 2010. Months later my sister sent me things my mother had saved over the years. Old letters and postcards sent from various places I visited. I think my mother enjoyed collecting stamps. I like this poem because there is reference to Judy, a young Chinese girl I was in love with back in the early sixties. Judy's race or color is not mentioned in the poem. It was a small secret. Everything seems small when one looks back at the past. Is an entire life no larger than a postcard or stamp?"

--E. Ethelbert Miller

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