Postcard

Inside a secondhand copy
Of The Old Man and the Sea
Is a gray postcard from Paris
Addressed from you to me
The month of May, three years ago
Not much to say, how could we know
Eight months later you would be gone
Now, I lay in my bed alone
Thinking how such a thing can be
When here are words you've written me
And so much more they seem to say
"I saw the Eiffel Tower Today."
The postage stamp, La Seine, Paris
Inside the Old Man and the Sea
Between the pages of Hemingway
In a faded copy of equal gray
Copyrighted in nineteen fifty-two
I have a postcard sent from you
"I've thought of you often"
And here, I smile
And dry a tear after awhile
To close the book with a tacit wish
Where the old man battles his mighty fish
And I silently struggle with what to do
With a postcard from Paris
And memories of you