New Poetry by Robert H. Demaree Jr.

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 to 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.  

- Robert H. Demaree Jr. 2012

Robert Demaree is the author of four collections of poems, including Mileposts, published October 2009 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 550 poems published or accepted by 125 periodicals, including the 2008 and 2010 Poet's Guide to New Hampshire. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com