Of Stamps and Uncles and Poems, Oh Yes!

I have an unusual stamp collection. No, it's not all neatly set out in albums. It comes on postcards and letters starting when I was very young and my Uncle Henry, who worked on a railroad mail run, took it upon himself to send letters and postcards overseas. I didn't start answering those letters for decades. I don't know why he kept up his end of the bargain because it seemed he was "talking to a wall." My dad must have mentioned how much they meant to me. Uncle Henry decorated his messages with National Wildlife Federation stickers which I thought were the world's best art next to Arthur Rackham. One year, my dad sent for a set of Metropolitan Opera "stamps" I could paste in a scrapbook. That was the extent of my stamp collection. I never finished that project. It wasn't the same as receiving a stamp on a letter. However, I was hooked from the very first encounter of an Uncle Henry stamp and was delighted when he sent a packet of foreign stamps of birds. In the 1960's, he bought a farmhouse he named, "Cardinal Hollow." The National Wildlife Federation sent him a plaque for being a devoted "back yard" naturalist. In a letter:" WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT--I PLANTED OVER 2000 SHRUBS AND TREES ON THE 60 ACRES AT THE HOLLOW WITH THE AID OF AN INDIAN HELPER. I ALSO BOUGHT A TELESCOPE AND BECAME A WATCHER OF THE SKIES, PURCHASED A PAIR OF BINOCULARS AND BECAME A FAIR TO MIDDLING ORNITHOLOGIST FOR A COUNTRY BOY. MY IMMORTALITY WILL BE BACK THERE WHERE I MOSTLY PLANTED VARIETIES THAT WOULD REPRODUCE THEMSELVES FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND WHERE MY UNKNOWN, UNSEEN EPITAPH WILL LIE AT THE BASE OF A MIGHTY OAK." I was in my twenties when I began the dedication to commemoratives. I would buy a small batch and put them on my Christmas cards. Somehow, I thought the stamp and the enclosed poem was as Christmassy as I wanted to be. I wasn't a Santa person. Christmas was indeed about joy but a reverent, exhilarating inward kind of joy, a stately three kings kind of joy. I thought gifts should be only for children. After exploring on my first computer and discovering Photostamp.com, I felt I had found my medium. The first one I created had an Uncle Henry postcard in the background. My favorite, though, is of Barbara and her little brother, another Henry. It's a tip o' the hat to someone they never met but would have been overjoyed to know. Perhaps soon, I can write about the King of Postcards, my brother, who faithfully, also didn't mind talking to a wall. I hope I can include one or two photos at that time. Uncle Henry was the poetry reciter in the family, even better than his sister-in-law, my mother. He said once, "You need to learn long poems by heart in case you are ever in jail." I decided to reach in, eyes closed, to the Uncle Henry shoebox with the birdhouse design to see if there was a poem I could share with you. Statistically, it's almost impossible to pick a letter or card without a poem and sure enough, here is the one that found me. I've put it in Uncle Henry capitals style:
"GROW STRONG, MY COMRADE...

THAT YOU MAY STAND

UNSHAKEN WHEN I FALL; THAT I MAY KNOW

THE SHATTERED FRAGMENTS OF MY SONG WILL COME

AT LAST TO FINER MELODY IN YOU
THAT I MAY TELL MY HEART THAT YOU BEGIN
WHEN PASSING I LEAVE OFF,
AND FATHOM MORE."

Typically, there is no author cited. Uncle Henry expected me to know. Or find out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~

...may the blessings of old stamps, old poems to remind you of the best of old times be yours...