POST OFFICE ‘The fost Office colorless, gray Except for those rea, white and blue logos ‘That go a quicker way, Provided planes are fying No bonb in the hold. warm woather bares the mailnan's knees. hy pest-person's a she, ‘Telumph of diversity, 2 blende who has sone history, Anthraxed in ‘01, cutaneous type, cured by now. ‘Once she opened her sack for me, Retrieved a love-letter dropped’ in mistakenly. Well, no mistake, I meant it when T wrote it But changed my mind and had to get it back Before it joined that irreversible strean Of past-due payments, hopes deferred, Resinés that never will be answered. Lately I valked in Cupertino, CR, Two miles each way on Bollinger Past Safeway to Stendhal, Not a single mailbox. ‘that daned e-nail has taken over, Instant phantasy of cyberspace. No inky tords on paper blotted ‘ihere a tear has droped Showing you really meant what you wrote. Stams are pure poetry - Mary Cassatt, Degas, Yonroe and Robeson, ‘Tlingit sculptures carved Before ve took the West and then the world, Cute Little designs spell 1-0-V-E. Can e-nail vie with that? Once (T think it was in 1985) ‘the Post Office issued seashell stamps, 2 set of five, 22-cent denomination ~ ‘the trilled dogvinkle, reticulated helmet, New Pagland neptune, calico scallop And the Lightning whelk ~ ut these realities, Zipeaded, postnarked, certified, are now tsunami-shrodded, Cradied shere they birthed, Deadlettered, mermaid-nourned, Embedded where the cons sleep, Refugees from cyberspace Waiting for deliverance, virtually. 3/28/05 Beth H. Lavine