The Lost Art of Letter Writing: A Poem

Pens, paper, thoughts, time…

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Scratch, scratch … the pen inched

across the page, the ink misbehaved

in little stops, with curlicues and flourishes

and the words knitted together.

A succession of pens, delicate

airmail paper, aerogrammes

with news crammed in

to every spare space. Penpals

in distant lands, stamps

that glowed with birds and flowers

or dour heads covered in smudged black.

It was always news — babies,

Christmases, birthdays, deaths –

the minutiae of daily life

made large. Chronicles

of ordinariness, speeding around

the globe. The smallest events

mattered to someone.

The art is fading –

not the facility with words, although

that too is being whittled away

like a piece of fine wood

under an expedient knife –