The Last Post

An old lady with a letter in her hand chasing a red post box down the road.

A poem mourning the disappearance of letters and the quiet decline of traditional postal life. As digital communication replaces handwritten words, a solitary postman becomes a symbol of a vanishing world, carrying the last traces of connection through an increasingly impersonal age.

I have just washed up the plates.
The water gurgles down the sinkhole.
I lift my head and see the postal worker,
delivering a pain-stricken stare
to the concrete pavement.

By the end of 2025, no more letters.
A 90% decline in volumes.
Like pigeon post —
we have been here before.

He digs into his mail sack,
takes out a solitary envelope for no.9,
and slips it through her box.
Letter writing has become an inanity.
We have lived here a long time.

Under the mottled clouds
the sun’s pallor barely gives light,
as he saunters out of the cul-de-sac,
a relic of the past.
I might not ever see him again.

Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century.

A ghostly postal worker walks into mist, pigeons circling above as letters swirl in the wind.