Letters Yellowed With Age

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Best Newbie Poem  Round 14  Kansaspoet Contest


Letters Yellowed With Age


I found them tucked away
behind the bureau in the den.
I knew what they would say.
They spoke the words of way back when.

Letters, yellowed with age,
each enclosed in faded cover.
With love on every page,
from my father to my mother.

He told her of his life
spent serving on a distant shore,
of a world filled with strife
and of a land ravaged by war.

He told her of his need
for her.  He told her that he cared.
And from the lines I read
between?  His soul, I know, he bared.

So much was left unsaid
in all the letters he wrote home.
The countless left for dead
and the terror of the unknown.

But now his body lies
in a grave across the water.
No more to set his eyes
on his darling wife and daughter.

I knew that they loved true,
and that they shared each other's pain.
I read each one anew
before I tied them up again.