finding a box of family letters

The dead say little in their letters

they haven't said before.

We find no secrets, and yet

how different every sentence sounds

heard across the years.

My father breaks my heart

simply by being so young and handsome.

He's half my age, with jet-black hair.

Look at him in his navy uniform

grinning beside his dive-bomber.

Come back, Dad! I want to shout.

He says he misses all of us

(though I haven't yet been born).

He writes from places I never knew he saw,

and everyone he mentions now is dead.

There is a large, long photograph

curled like a diploma—a banquet sixty years ago.

My parents sit uncomfortably

among tables of dark-suited strangers.

The mildewed paper reeks of regret.

I wonder what song the band was playing,

just out of frame, as the photographer

arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot?

Get out there on the floor and dance!

You don't have forever.

What does it cost to send a postcard

to the underworld? I'll buy

a penny stamp from World War II

and mail it downtown at the old post office

just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve.

Surely the ghost of some postal worker

still makes his nightly rounds, his routine

too tedious for him to notice when it ended.

He works so slowly he moves back in time

carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses.

It's silly to get sentimental.

The dead have moved on. So should we.

But isn't it equally simpleminded to miss

the special expertise of the departed

in clarifying our long-term plans?

They never let us forget that the line

between them and us is only temporary.

Get out there and dance! the letters shout

adding, Love always. Can't wait to get home!

And soon we will be. See you there.

~ Dana Gioia

with thanks to writers almanac

photo from living solutions