Letters

 

I remember when  a stamp cost two cents,

and the letter my mother wrote to me in Vancouver

arrived next day in Kelowna.

Now mailing a letter costs a dollar-five,

and takes most of a week to travel

an hour and a half away, now that

mechanization has "improved" things

so that it has to be driven down-Island first, 

and get sorted to turn around

and come back up.

I remember all the years as a young mother,

typing fat missives to my mom and my friends,

how we'd send them off, packed with our daily doings,

and, in a week or two, would receive
a fat letter back full of their

last two weeks. We knew how to wait then.

It was what life was, much of it.

My kids went to sleep and woke up

to the sound of me typing those letters,

so important was it to share all the life

we were living.

Email just isnt the same. It is immediate,

but transitory. Mundane, not special.

I once saved letters;

no one saves emails. They are informal,

everyday. No one pretends emails

can ever reach literary heights as,

sometimes, our letters did.

No one prints books of the emails

of well-known writers.

I remember when a stamp cost two cents.

They cost a dollar-five now. No one

writes letters any more. And email

just isn't the same.

Inspired by "The Letter, 1968" by Marie Howe, printed recently in the New Yorker. The italicized lines are hers.