Keep the Hearth Alight

To whoever is minding the fire,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. A letter for the way home, late 1920: a warm kraft envelope, a lyrical copperplate title, a small dark green village window set into one corner, a fine rust-red strip of folk weaving, a cream field-journal label tied with linen thread, and a few ears of wheat engraved beside it.

Outside, the wind has risen and the snow with it. A poet, sitting by his own hearth on such a night, wrote: “The storm covers the sky with mist and whirls the snow in eddies; now it howls like a beast, now it weeps like a child, now it suddenly rustles on the rotten thatch, now, like a belated traveller, it knocks at our window.” — Alexander Pushkin, Winter Evening (1825)

Then let this letter be the belated traveller. It knocks; you open; while the fire is still alight, that is enough.

May the embers never die

Storm Post Office

Late 1920 · The Don country