Lay for the Day 10th January

The anniversary of the introduction of the penny post in the United Kingdom in 1840, the world’s first universally affordable and dependable postal system.

Lines

Odd to have friends
half-worlds away,
from New Orleans
to Japan, say;

Argentina,
San Francisco,
you’ll find your heart
strings stretched out to.

Cards and snaps on
a cork-tile board
by your cupboard:
by one broad point –

an eyebrow’s curve
or the fullness
of a red beard,
inquisitive

tilt of the head –
you’ll fasten them
in memory,
whose faces change

in the beds of
strangers, other
weathers, other
news to wake to.

Walking neurons,
we keep in touch.
Leavetaking, left-
ness of hearts all

over winds more
and more thread by
day and by night
on this mind-ball.

John Gibbens
from Characters: You & I

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar