KS Culbreth

Letters I Had Hidden Away

Letters I had hidden away,
To read some shrunken distant day
I stumbled on this afternoon
Read through the arc of winter’s moon.

Letters, letters, her diary
I was honored to have lent to me
She let me read her secret treasure
Which I kept for future pleasure

To slow the spinning of this ball
The tireless engine for to stall;
To fill the gap between gold and gray
And leap back to vanished days.

Letters to read in sixty years
When dust replaced those salty tears
When it was safe and Time concealed
The secrets that we’d both revealed

Letters sent last spring and summer
Which we read with loving wonder
A wonder we knew would be as strong
In sixty years, however long

Letters which she sealed with kisses
Folded under curling tresses –
Sealing in a love and past
To preserve a glory passed.

I wish I had not pulled that drawer
To see once again as before
My name written in her own pen
I wish I had not looked again.

For in the letters that we sent
As maudlin as they may have been
In the poetry we wrote –
As sing-song as a jingle’s notes,

Was the blissful ache of love and time
That makes such strangers of heart and mind,
An ache best bridged by sixty years
And not brought-to with salty tears.