Jena

thus my mother on a postcard

from a walking holiday on the banks of the Saale,

she was spending a week at the spa of Kosen;

long forgotten now, the ancestor no more,

her script a subject for graphology,

years of becoming, years of illusion,

only those words I’ll never forget.

It wasn’t a great picture, no class,

there was not enough blossom

to justify lovely, poor paper, no pulp-free mass,

also the hills weren’t green with vineyards,

but she was from back-country hovels,

so the valleys probably did strike her as lovely,

she didn’t need laid paper or four-color print,

she supposed others would see what she had seen.

It was something said at a venture,

an exaltation had prompted it,

the landscape had moved her,

so she asked the waiter for a postcard,

and yet—vide supra—the ancestor went on,

as will we all, including even those—

years of becoming, years of illusion—

who see the town in the valley today.