handwrit

There is no welcome home so warm
As being greeted with a package
With your name on it, handwritten.
A great white heap of toughened paper,
or maybe brown,
Stamped and sealed
Signed and delivered and signed for.

Seeing my name in handwriting excites me.
The days of notes passed in class are over.
“Do you like Amanda? Tick yes, no or maybe.”

The long letters girls exchange during summers. Confessions of love and pain and apologies Where teardrops fall and indigo blooms on the page-long gone.
My childhood penpals all found me on Facebook.
Now penned mention of my name is limited
To post-it notes and the backs of old envelopes
“Amanda! Drank your juice, will replace later!”
Messages that could refer to any Amanda
Who ever lived and breathed, anywhere.
Here’s my name and address on a package
From a foreign country
Crossed seas and borders and currency exchanges
Sniffed by dogs, weighed, inspected
First class airmail
And letting me know I must be in the right place.

foliage and tokens

We found an unusual leaf one day on the side walk, and I picked it up. it looked like a yellow fan with a split in the middle of perhaps the tail of an equally unusual bird, and you told me the following day that you had described it to your mom over the phone and she was pretty sure it was from the ginkgo tree. I still have it in my scrapbook at home, glowing golden against a red page and I'm not sure where but I saw the word 'gingko' today and thought about it.

I read a little about the ginkgo tree tonight. Interesting stuff. would you believe it is actually the only remaining genus in it's family which is not extinct and is known as a 'living fossil'?
Also, four ginkgo trees were among the very few living things to survive Hiroshima in 1945, and they are still alive today.
This tree has got stories. And I'm glad I have one of it myself.
Thank you André Michaux for bringing the ginkgo tree from China to North America and into my hand.

And so, I was walking home in the snow today thinking about that sunny day and that sunny leaf and had this flashing image of us, for one instant, sitting under a ginkgo tree in the sun counting each others freckles.