by Ken Poyner

When the city comes undone, I take the best of my stamp collection and burrow deep in the woods where as a child I was not allowed to play.  My back against a tree, I watch the images on stamp faces disappear in order of technology.  Spaceships, airplanes, automobiles all dissolving as the city comes undone.  Wagons and carts and yokes and saddles wink out and the horses and oxen and drivers stare quizzically a moment, then wander vacantly into memory.  As the city comes undone, all that is left is the price of the stamps, costs reflecting evaporating history.