Many people I love are born in December. Who knows why. I have heard feeble explanations.

I didn’t want
to tell anyone
when I turned fifty.
We were in PERU
on a boat going
to a small island
near Lake Atitlan
to an island where
old women how old
were they really
all seemed to be smiling
although maybe I was
just looking for people
who were smiling because
it was my birthday.
I quickly got
even older and so
did all my friends
every single one of us
is older and now
I know how lucky
it is that we are.

About the Series. Postcards for Hanukkah is a sequence of eight photo-poems by Matthew Septimus and Esther Cohen. Each day, for the eight days of Hanukkah, we will release a new postcard, which we hope give some light to you.