This postcard has been in my collection since I was twenty years old, living abroad in England. I was visiting the Tate Gallery for the first time, and John Singer Sargent's "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" stopped me in my tracks. I haven't tried to recreate here what I felt then; only to let the image work upon my consciousness once again, and see what words come of it.
rose-fleet light
petal flame and paper
the ache that names lost things
unnamed until lost
-mjm
