February 24, 2014

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.

 

 

 

Copyright � 2014 by E. Ethelbert Miller. Used with permission of the author.

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  

Most Recent Book by Miller




First Light: New and Selected Poems

(Black Classic Books, 2012)  

 

 

 

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E. Ethelbert Miller is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently First Light: New and Selected Poems (Black Classic Books, 2012). He lives in Washington, D.C.


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