SENT LETTER

Once upon a time

hand scribed letters had moment,

especially if waited for, or if

unannounced, had hearts racing

as fumbling fingers broke a seal,

or if reluctant gum was hard fast

like my maiden aunts lips,

giving nothing away until

one will had its way with the other.

Once upon a time,

the paper quality

gave off the signals, scents,

a sense of the other,

the writer,

embossing added gravity.

These days emails spill on to your screen,

egalitarian, queued by 24/7 timing,

each address as bland as the other,

and mouse clicking has all the drama

of milk delivery, as email addresses

open themselves to reveal a chosen or

a default font, with no sense of shaped

letters, idiosyncrasy of pen, wide sweeps,

an insight into the familiar hand, turn

of phrase, word choice, not spell checked.

There were days when bland type-faced

telegrams had no character of font, but

their existence and their presence, in

the hand of a uniformed messenger, was

their power to reveal issues of moment,

in trembling wavering hands.

A computer, or phone alert will never

compete with the shrill whistle of the

postie, the punctuation mark that was

the key to a thousand possibilities,

limited only by anxiety levels and

emotional barometric readings.