A mail truck rumbles fitfully,
a bucking rectangle of promise:
catalogs and bills, adverts, stills
in b & w, color inserts, an avalanche
of unfamiliar conversations:
hearing aids and plumbing,
medications, an endless, numbing
stream of mindless asks.
Hidden beneath a political flyer,
a note handwritten, a name:
your name, my name, a scribing
of kinship, a missile of hearts
launched across miles and moments
conveyed by a careless hand,
a love letter tossed into the void
of another’s red-flagged box.
How careless to discard your writ
as one more or less unhappy minor
chord, one trembling coal of ardor
flung away, unlit.
