On the front of the
“Private Mailing Card”
is a photo of a dirt road,
lined with trees and old houses
perched on the edge
of a bay or a large pond.
What looks like a broken pier
juts out into the water
and a single, small boat
floats at the edge of the card.

On the reverse, a 1 cent
Benjamin Franklin stamp
is pasted upside down.
There are two post marks,
showing the card was mailed
from Boston on Dec 28 1903 at 12:30P,
addressed to Mrs. H. S. Ford
at No. 9 Hamstead Road
and “Received” at
The Jamaica Plain Station.

The street name is misspelled
and I wonder if Mrs. Ford
ever received the card
and learned that “Harry”
was “sorry I did not
let you know sooner”.

Russel Dupont, poet, artist, novelist, has published work in the albatross, Spectrum, The I, For Poets Only, The Anthology of South Shore Poets, Mozaic Daily Jazz Gazette, Re-Side, Oddbal, JerryJazzMusician, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, the new post-literate, DADAKU, One Sentence, the Northern New England Review, Verse-Virtual, The Lothlorien Review, Pick-Me-Up Poetry, Silver Birch Press, The Poetry Porch 2024 and Cold Moon Journal.