Greeting Card Sentiment Poem by Sonny Rainshine

The birthday card,
dated 6/99, had traveled
and had aged,
a bit like its intended
addressee.

Its borders had begun
to fray and the white background
had turned to a tentative ecru,
one of the many colors of
the effluvia of time.

On the front a Native American
drawing of a ceremonial toy, a top,
lay there suspended,
as if hurlting through space,
but having forgotten how to spin
all of a sudden.

The insignia on the back
tell us that the card
was manufactured in San Francisco.
Having been mailed from Lake Tahoe,
the little gift had come a long way,
eastward, over mountains
and across the Mississippi.

I found the card,
its two flaps folded
like praying hands,
inside a library book,
its intimacy both
thrilling and disturbing to me.

In my hands
was an expression
of someone’s love,
in this case, a daughter’s
for her father.
What would either of them
think right now,
to imagine a stranger
reading their lives
in such a way?