Jessica Fox-Wilson sent us this postcard.

This postcard by Jean Morris seemed like the perfect note to end the year on. She writes,

A year ago, on one of the first days of flinching cold such as we’re having now [Nov. 25], I photographed the cellist in the underpass, and posted this photo and haiku on my blog. The Postal Poem format adds something, I think, placing the words close to the source of the music, where they draw the eye as the cello drew my ear.

We wish all our readers and contributors a happy, safe, and productive New Year.

Michelle McGrane created this postcard for our second contest with an image (Graffiti Behind Snow) by Mikey G Ottawa.

Jennifer Saunders sent us this postcard from Switzerland, where she lives. “I took this photo while hiking in the Alps,” she said. “Then, about 50 yards down the trail, I stopped, dug my notebook out of my pack, and wrote the haiku.”

Amy Elizabeth Thompson supplied the words to an image by Mikey G Ottawa for our second contest. This proved to be a very popular image for postcard-makers; we’ll be publishing several other winning entries in the coming weeks.

Nathan Horowitz supplied the words to an image by Mikey G Ottawa for our second contest. This was one of several winning entries to use that image; look for the others over the coming weeks.

Dinty Moore made this postcard from one of his own photos, inspired by a quote which he says he finds harder and harder to live up to the more he grows older:

The opposite of play isn’t work, it’s depression.
To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed
as if one is assured of one’s prospects.
—Brian Sutton Smith

Ingrid Steblea sent us this poetry postcard.

Suzanne Allen created this postcard in Picnik, but also printed it out on photo paper, and says, “any submissions I send you may also be sold to whoever will buy them here on the streets in Paris where I am currently living.” Go for it, Suzanne!

Pamela Hart created this poetry postcard with one of her own photos. We admire the way she nested the poem into the picture for maximum visibility — always a challenge for longer poems on postcards. For the benefit of the visually impaired, though, we reprint the text of the poem below:

Equinox

Then it was over yesterday, the burnished end
of summer, where it had been all along

though I hardly noticed, distracted by the pull
of the ordinary which was so beautiful I spent

an hour or so thinking about how I’d looked
at patterned light on a wall because I believed

in splitting open the mundane. Possibly summer’s end
— the stale humidity, the poured out stories

flooding the house — was there as snow melt
forgotten like an old scar.

But I’d looked away, amused by desire’s low sound
its usual gesture of blue.