Howard Firkin
My children send me postcards from a land
where horizontal threes hang in the sky
beneath a golden hedgehog. It can fly
like anything—the ground’s there if you stand,
but gravity’s no law, and okay rules.
The houses there sport jaunty chimneys, smoke
is worn in perfect ringlets, gardens grow
their flowers in a single level row,
and everybody’s smiling at the one joke:
at me and all outlandish bloody fools.

Relentlessly they travel on and stop
for nothing less than night—their only care
is not to miss their journey’s end. They drop
the odd line home, and wish I could be there.