Lately our poets loiter’d in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballads of the plains;
I fancied I had strength to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze
Upon the flowers thro’ which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece.
My slumber broken and my doublet torn,
I find the laurel also bears thorn.
“
A woman who adored her mother, and had mourned her death every day for years now, came across some postcards in a store that sold antiques and various other bric-a-brac. The postcards were of unexceptional scenes, but she was drawn to them and purchased several of wild beaches and forest roads. When she got home, she experienced an overwhelming need to send a card to her mother.
What she wrote was not important. It was the need that was important.
She put the card in an envelope and sent it to her mother’s last earthly address, a modest farmhouse that had long since been sold and probably sold again.
Within a week she received a letter, the writing on the envelope unmistakably her mother’s. Even the green ink her mother had favored was the same.
The woman never opened the letter, nor did she send any other postcards to that address.
The letter, in time, though only rumored to still exist, caused her children, though grown, much worry.
“
Joy Williams | “Postcard”