Let us return to the days of Kit Carson.

Someone needs to explain
the United States Postal Service
to me.
I'd greatly appreciate it.
And a back rub, maybe a cup of coffee
(light & sweet, just how I like my women).

A week ago my roommate said
there was a notice stuffed in the door
about a certified letter that required my signature.
I wrote it off at first as something trivial
like a label warning the Law's stance
on removing said label from a mattress
but became curious today
like a Catholic schoolgirl in her first freshman dorm
and decided to investigate.

After work I stopped by
the local Post Office around the corner
only to find it's a mere Substation of some sort
apparently nothing more than a glorified stamp store
with a blue mailbox out front
and a sexless flesh paperweight inside.
This disgruntled shell of a woman at the counter told me
I'd have to go to the Main Office
downtown to retrieve my mysterious letter.
Annoyed at the inconvenience
but further intrigued by the challenge
like Casanova with a bad reputation
I drove ten minutes east
to the other side of the tracks
not realizing I was about to take on
the Postal Gestapo, unarmed.

I pulled up along the curb
making sure to lock my doors
since this was no neighborhood
in which to leave a vehicle unattended.
Still sweaty and dirty and irritated from work
I climbed the stone stairs and strode
into the lobby. The equally cantankerous
clerk asked how she could help me
though her tone betrayed her false enthusiasm.

A faint smirk shot across her lips
as if she'd won a small victory
as soon as she asked me the date
on which I'd received the notice
and I shrugged my shoulders.
I never physically held the piece of paper
since my buddy was the one
who found it and then threw it away.
She thought her work with me was soon to be done
due to my lack of required information.
Soon she'd be snarling at the next person in line
waiting to badger her with pesky requests
and unreasonable desires of a parcel-shipment nature.

"Can't you find it with my name and address?"
didn't seem like too outlandish a question.
"No, there are hundreds of letters every day!"
You'd think a system so crucial
to the daily function of our society
would be better organized
but then again this is a country
that rebuilds countries it blows up
but lets its own homeless sleep in the streets.

Feeling foolish for my inadequacy
and wasted time, gas, and calories
I about-faced and headed for the door
cursing under my breath
when it dawned on me to call my friend
and ask if he happened to remember the date
that he received the notice.
He did.
I turned back around and marched up the stairs again
not yet ready to holster my tongue.

She saw me coming back
right to the front of the line
and asked if I knew the date now
with a slight tinge of defeat in her tone.
I could tell she was someone
who never turns right on red, even
with a line of blinking cars behind her.
"The Seventeenth," I sneered sarcastically
after waiting for her to finish processing a package.
She disappeared for two minutes
as I spun my keychain on my index finger
like a six-shooter, my triumph allegedly imminent.

Returning empty-handed
she told me it was not in the stack
of certified letters that had been intended
to be delivered on that date. Dumbfounded
I asked her to check if it was the Sixteenth.
A more hateful glare has not been given
from the prosecution's side of a courtroom
in a murder trial, but she complied
as that engraved nametag required her to do.
Another two minutes went by
without any sophomore optimism on my part
and she returned without anything in her hands
but a ballpoint pen squeezed in her balled-up fist
protected from germs by baby blue latex gloves.
The line of other blue collars was growing behind me
and the clerk's patience was clearly waning
so I wasn't about to ask her to check
the Eighteenth, or God forbid
the Fifteenth of June, suddenly seemingly
equal to the Ides of March
or one of the many Fridays the Thirteenth.

"You'll have to wait for a second notice
and return with that date, sir," with the
emphasis on the last word of the sentence
to express her thrill in having the last word.
She tried to go on explaining her fake condolences
while maintaining loyalty to her precious system
that would force a man to wait another week
for a letter that was just on the other side
of a partition constructed of oak and bulletproof glass
because an employee paid by his taxes
was too lazy to sift through a few more piles.
I had no intentions of coming back in search
of this elusive correspondence. Whoever wrote
whatever it is will find me somehow if it's meant to be.
"Nevermind, it can't be that important,"
was my reply before she had time to
hit me with another cookie-cutter
customer appeasement phrase
they teach in the training video.
I thought I heard a barely audible
"Sir! Sir!" through the walls of her fish tank
as I walked outside, this time not caring.

So, Ed McMahon
(if you're even still alive)
you and your big check
from Publishers Clearing House
will just have to find someone else;
or, if it's bad news in that envelope
I'm sure it'll manage
to find its way--
but Honey, don't rely on it being via
the United States Postal Service, try UPS.

And you can bet your bottom stamp
that this wouldn't have happened
in the days of the Pony Express.