robert demaree

LOVE LETTERS


In a box I once thought sealed for good:
Our letters, postmark 1960,
Now naïve, of course,
Florid declarations back and forth
Between college dorms and Army posts,
Embraced by a faint musty dampness
And decaying rubber bands.

Packed away for years,
A hedge against the reach of time,
They have arrived again at a crossroad:
Whether to stay,
Unable the salve the grief they know will come,
Alone, except for the silverfish,
Another forty years,
To entertain our grandsons’ wives;
Or, as we conclude, evidence not needed,
And so to join the accretion of phone bill stubs
And invitations to unremembered showers,
Black bags, in the rain, in the curbside archive.

“Love Letters” appeared in Poet’s Ink May 2008


Robert Demaree is the author of three collections of poems, including Fathers and Teachers, published April 2007 by Beech River Books. The winner of the 2007 Conway, N.H., Library Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives five months of the year. He has had over 300 poems published or accepted by 90 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com