Postcard

By Ange Mlinko

How did Yours Truly become a synonym for I? Yours Truly did not go on vacation. Yours Truly is the last blogger standing on Harriet during these dog days of the dog days d’Aug.
Yours Truly discovered that a perfectly banal stretch of road nearby, a road beleaguered with frequent back-ups and endless stoplights, clusters of strip malls, car dealerships, cabinetry and tile and “window treatment” stores; this road Yours Truly would do anything to avoid except that it’s got the only bookstore within miles (a Barnes and Noble with a decent poetry selection), an Old Navy and a Wal-mart (as depressing a shopping experience as Yours Truly has ever had, execrable labor practices aside); this road known as Route 6 actually expires in Provincetown, Mass.!
It’s as if I could just reel it in, that selfsame Route 6, and find myself at land’s end.
If you had started when I first advised you, you might have seen our tracks in the sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way from the Nauset Lights to Race Point, some thirty miles,—for at every step we made an impression on the Cape, though we were not aware of it, and though our account may have made no impression on your minds. But what is our account? In it there is no roar, no beach-birds, no tow-cloth.
(Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod)
I so missed the beach this year that I planted a white rugosa so I could at least smell that familiar beach rose smell, and watch the tomatoey hips ripen over the weeks.
Much that is called “woods” was about half as high as this,—only patches of shrub-oak, bayberry, beach-plum, and wild roses, overrun with woodbine. When the roses were in bloom, these patches in the midst of the sand displayed such a profusion of blossoms, mingled with the aroma of the bayberry, that no Italian or other artificial rose-garden could equal them. They were perfectly Elysian, and realized my idea of an oasis in the desert.
Wish you were here, Yours Truly, The Reverend Poluphloisboios Thalassa.

2007-08-20

Posted in Group Blog, Uncategorized on Monday, August 20th, 2007 by Ange Mlinko.