Stamps of the World

Why does Portugal love Snoopy? And why

do so many countries around the world 

(Denmark, Cuba, Paraguay…) love cats?

Perhaps that’s a silly question. After all,

I love Snoopy and I love cats. Why

would anyone not? Still – on stamps?

Beautiful Mt Fuji seems to make more sense.

and perhaps some flowers are national,

or birds, or even fungi. (But lobsters? Bats?)

I’m more used to profiles of monarchs

(British) or notables from history (Australian)

or images of expensive public events.

In the middle of my childhood,

when I started to be serious, but before

I became teenaged and frivolous again, 

Grandpa decided I’d collect stamps, like him.

He thought I’d enjoy it; spent hours teaching me 

about the rare, the peculiar, the detailed stories

of particular specimens, their varied geography.

I didn’t want facts about little squares of paper –

though I loved it when he taught me about trees 

and birds and rocks, and far-flung family members.

What I wanted on paper was a good story: 

the books he gave me too. (The stamps

were the only thing he got wrong.)

Maybe, if the stamps in those days depicted cats 

and monkeys and fungi, and cartoon characters….

These days, who uses stamps? We write emails.

The prompt from NaPoWriMo was to be inspired by stamps, with links to some collections of pictures. I looked at this lot in particular.  I starte dwriting the poem before getting the PAD prompt, which was to write a middle poem, so I've given only a passing nod to that, which I placed in the middle of my poem.