Notes About The Poem
This is a ballad because, in a sense, it tells a story. I could not call it rhymed or free verse because it has some of both. This is personal and somewhat autobiographical.
Letter To a Soldier - a Trilogy
LETTER TO A SOLDIER
A Trilogy
I. SONGS OF LOVE
Love walked with me
In the crisp fall air
In a shower of gold and red.
Love showed me the print
Of a doe’s foot
And where she made her bed.
Love sat by me
And warmed my heart
Under winter’s starry sky.
Love fitted my soul
With gossamer wings
And taught me how to fly.
Love rode with me
Through soft gray mist,
Through feathery palest green.
Love opened my heart
And looked within
Where no one had ever seen.
Love walked with me
And held my hand
On a breathless summer hill.
Love lay with me
In the soft green grass,
And time and the wind stood still.
The sun was hot
And the green grass sweet,
And the leaves whispered quiet above.
With cherishing words
And gentle hands
You taught me the songs of love
II. WHY?
Sometimes, at unexpected times,
The bittersweet memories flood back.
Those magic years when the
Days and nights were endless
And seemed to run seamlessly,
One into the other.
When life itself was today,
Only the present,
Never the past or future.
Only the moments we seized.
We drank them in greedily,
With abandon, spilling carelessly
As if we would always have enough!
Away from studies, we roamed
The hills and woods of West Point.
We climbed the redoubts and
The lichen-covered rocks under
Trees of another century
That leafed out to cover us,
Keeping close our secrets.
There was that small glade
Where we glimpsed a deer with fawns
And found Jack in the Pulpits
Blooming in a sea of ferns.
We made love on the bed
Of soft green moss by a little waterfall.
So little did we think then of the
World outside our love – the world
Where, in a far-off Asian country
A war would crush our dreams.
But, inexorably, the day came
When we both were graduated,
I from college, you from West Point.
And, after the celebrations
Were over, you had to go away
(We did not know it was forever)
To serve your nation --
Until the day you gave your life,
At barely twenty-two, in the
Desolate foothills of South Korea!
III. LAST LETTER
You had to go and leave me.
I wasn’t ready
For the emptiness,
The open sky and vacant roads
And fields and fields and fields!
In the pathways of my mind
I see you waiting still,
With that crooked smile
And waiting, open arms.
Can you see the past?
Can you feel a sense of loss?
Can you remember the
Blackberry kisses,
Juice running down our chins,
While we crumpled up
With laughter in the sun-sweet grass?
That pale, featureless room with
The ugly flowered bedspread
Where we made love,
Cocooned in blankets, and
Fought away the dawn?
The frigid Catskills lake,
Buildings boarded for the winter,
Where we laughed and
Swam and ran out blue and shivering
To the old, green van, where,
Wrapped in clothes and quilt,
We warmed ourselves with coffee
From a thermos and
Ate ham sandwiches?
Now you are forever gone,
I feel my grief in silence –
No public rituals for me.
And so I add this last letter
To the small packet in
My hand and light the match.
The wind fans the flickering flame,
And my eyes tear up and sting
As smoke and flames and ashes swirl
Upward, then vanish in the wind.
CODA
Now I rage against the pain
Of all those who since have lost
Fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, lovers,
Against lives squandered, dreams shattered
In frozen mountains of Afghanistan,
In muddy swamps of Vietnam,
In burning deserts of Iraq.
I wail in the darkness – “Listen!
Listen! Surely God by any name
Never created humankind to hate,
To kill, and do it in His name!”
But why does no-one hear?
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