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After forty years and another death
the evenings are peaceful.
I live in Forestdale, near Silver Creek,
where I showed you the pioneer graves.
They cut down the cottonwoods.
My daughter lives on the coast,
and my son in Chicago.
Their children are growing.
I visit at Christmas.
It鈥檚 strange, feeling free to remember,
after a lifetime with Robert,
the long, honest job he did for us all.
Babies, their cries, little illnesses.
Pride, later, but fear, always fear.
As I feared for you in those crazy dead days.
When your letters stopped,
I dreamed of you falling, burning鈥�
a stab in the heart, then a habit.
When I married, I burned
the snapshots and letters.
I can鈥檛 remember your voice or your eyes.
My dear boy, my first son鈥�
What would you ask me to tell you?
The news of the day, perhaps?
Nothing has changed.
The world is still falling, burning.
Sometimes, in bed, in August,
I am nineteen again.
I lift your name into my mind.
Your arms hold me lightly.
Why not?
At breakfast I am myself,
a widow, sipping her coffee.
from Fought by Boys: New and Selected Poems from War
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