Fire on the Track

To you, taking the torch,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. January 1991, Australia. The cream envelope has a light grain, and bold early-nineties sports brush lettering charges diagonally out of the frame. In the terracotta-and-blue screenprint, flames and a running track twine together, the slanted composition pushing at your back like a wind. Fine field-map notes run along one side, and an ochre athletic bib is pinned at the corner.

An English poet once sent a skylark climbing, rising like fire: “Higher still and higher / From the earth thou springest / Like a cloud of fire;” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark (1820)

A flame is not for burning but for passing. The fast carry it to the front, and the slow keep the embers warm behind; both belong to the same team. Hold your letter in your palm a little longer, then hand it to us.

May the flame be passed along

Storm Post Office

January 1991 · Australia