A brown paper envelope,
Inscribed by you, addressed to me,
With quaint, old-fashioned stamper-y:
It lies upon the butcher block,
Its letters screaming at me.
Inscrutable, decipherable
To but a few, your idio-
Syncratic script
Crawls ‘cross the bundle:
Fraktur, shadow-sculpting.
And yet, it trails both here and there,
And deviates, not following
The script, the text, the primer,
Where you learned
That coded syntax:
Like Leonardo, with his beard
Now trailing down, untended-to,
His head bare, eyebrows
Bristling, exhausted.
Writing forwards.
It seems but a small error,
Just a crack, chink in the armor
Defending you
From all the
Disbelievers in your prowess,
And yet, you could not let this go.
Though your inventions fade with you,
Though we watched your body
Fading, too: you could not
Neglect my birthday.
Copyright 2018 Andrea LeDew
I love how the poem ends.
Thank you Liz. My mother was a stickler for remembering holidays and birthdays and even when she passed away the week of my birthday, she did not neglect to send a gift, which i received shortly after hearing of her death. 😔❤️
You’re welcome, Andrea. My mother was a stickler for remembering holidays and birthdays as well.