poetry from a postcard.

a student from my traveling poetry class, barbara tucker, recently visited her family in wisconsin and kindly obliged my request for her to send me a postcard. anyone who knows me also knows that i am a big letter and postcard sender, despite these almost-artifacts often being tricky to find when you want to buy one while on vacation or elsewhere. i also upcycle art gallery opening postcards and craft new ones out of the fronts of greeting cards sometimes, too.

i did not guess, but perhaps i ought to have figured it would turn out this way– the madison + ice cream postcard i received in the mail yesterday is brimming with poetry.

this reminded me a bit of braided creek, which is snail-mailed correspondence in the form of very short poems back and forth between friends ted kooser and jim harrison. kooser served as the u.s. poet laureate from 2004 and 2006. i donated a copy of braided creek to the boyertown community library  a few years ago through my local publication called news, not blues. i'm not sure but think the mailed poems may have been mostly on postcards or perhaps a combination of letters in envelopes and also postcards prepared by kooser and harrison.

but now for some ice cream cone postcard eye-candy.

here are some of the words, spelled out from the postcard itself.

from the pen, hand, life, & mind of barbara tucker:

i am, as you know, visiting

sisters in wisconsin –

beautiful lakes, rivers,

fields of corn, wheat, 

prairie grasses, cows – 

blue skies – pale colors

...

talking, reading,

watching old DVDs.