Overnight Delivery - Jan 2 2026

 

Overnight Delivery

Jan 2 2026

Overnight delivery

will take several weeks.

Are books the orphaned children

of online retail?

Are they working to rule,

and how can I quibble

over a living wage?

Or are they just backed up

from the holiday rush?

Which I can hardly begrudge;

it’s Christmas, after all

and children come first.

And anyway, isn’t anticipation

half the fun?

We learned what it meant to wait

back in the day

when you sent 5 boxtops and 1 thin dime

in a self-addressed envelope

to Battle Creek, or wherever

with stamps dug from your mother’s purse

  . . . then waited 6 weeks for the prize.

Which was always a letdown;

if nothing else

a good life lesson

in capitalist flimflammery.

Things were slower back then,

a time of postal mail

and tempered expectations.

Except, of course, for long distance calls

station-to-station on a static-filled line

paid by the minute

with time ticking on.

While my Dad stood by, watching the clock,

wincing at every clink 

as more nickels and dimes

dropped onto the pile.

It’s a thin book of poetry

I’m gifting myself.

I will read it slowly

and treasure it all the more,

because scarcity

in an age of excess

is a bracing antidote.

A hardcover book, meant to be kept,

slipped into place on a library shelf

and turned to again,

when the mood strikes

or I want to share.

Not disposable, like those cheap plastic toys

that weren’t worth the wait

not to mention the dime.

And something analogue

in a time of impervious screens

and virtual text,

pixels blinking on-and-off

as if they’d never been.

Heavy bond paper

that has texture and weight.

Words of substance

instead of fugitive light.

And art that will keep,

lovely little watercolours

to revisit as I please.

Delivery confirmed

   . . . but no word of when;

which, like high-hanging fruit

tantalizes that much more.

But likely long enough 

to have slipped my mind

and catch me by surprise,

there at the door

some dull winter morning

rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

All the better

to have waited for.

I mentioned to a friend — with whom I share an interest in poetry and an enthusiasm for dogs — that a new Billy Collins was out.

Notable was her look of mild surprise when I said that not only hadn’t I received it, but that it would take 2 to 3 weeks. That it can be so unexpected to have to exercise patience is only because we’ve all gotten so used to instant gratification. We’ve been spoiled by a consumerist world that seamlessly connects the internet to our front porch; by the complicated logistics that are so conveniently invisible. 

So why am I taking so much pleasure in waiting? Is it the allure of scarcity, the pleasure of anticipation?

And why didn’t I just buy the Kindle version: not only (literally) instant, but cheaper?  Is it that when you value something, you want to possess the actual object, the material thing? What does something of substance have over something digital and virtual?

Seemed worth trying to say in poetry. (Prose is too easy for me!)

(I took some poetic license in writing some dull winter morning/rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I am absolutely not an early riser. The sun would already be on its way down by the time I ever opened the front door!)