Article 13

1  (Postcard home)
for Julie, Michael, Teri, Melentie


Send lots of postcards
the note said, 

at work 
on my last day. 

I don’t know
who wrote it.  

Julie or Teri.  
A Saturday.

I open up the shop, the
gallery, find their note.
         #
We fly out
the next day.  
         #

                  And here I am 
after five days in London
& three in Trieste, 

in Kortula.

Three days.

Angelina Jolie &
Brad Pitt 
might ‘be’ 
in the boat opposite the bar we’re in.  
But I don’t care about them.  

         #

So, what’s to report?

And is this a ‘letter’
—by the by—

or a poem?

Undecided.
But the day 
before me
looks pleasant —
if unexamined.

Clean air, a deferential
—a tiny—
breeze
from the sea in the bay, my
foot on my knee—where I
balance this pad & write
to you—my foot touching the table, too,

where a macchiato appears
my first this trip, my
first for years in fact.

Tho it means something different
in Adelaide:
the price of an air ticket.  A
view of the blue thru pines