Elegy for a Post Office

Here is a fond farewell, you flakes of peeling paint
on the old white door, closed forever.
Adieu stamps and stationery, quaint
reminders of yesteryear.

There is no profit in village gossip
or children’s savings in little green books.
George Rex sits dejected, begging for envelopes.
The RNIB dog is chipped and crooked.

No more that smell of dry cleaning and paper –
ten miles it is to the nearest sniff.
Strangers will walk past and won’t bat an eyelid
at the carcass of our post office.