In a side room
in a corner of the basement
of the house on Homer Street
when I was a just a child
there was a leather trunk
brown with a clasp
full of letters
mailed by someone with a name
I didn't recognize
to someone else whose name
I also didn't recognize
what drew me were the stamps
that I cut carefully
from their envelopes
and just as carefully steamed off
stamps from the forties
when my dad was
in the war
who were they being stored for
all those years?
I could have asked my father
was it perhaps
a war buddy of his
some soldier
who had never made it back
like Jane's father
the first girl I dated
of course she didn't mention it
only later did I learn it
from my mother
who had spoken with Jane's mother
as for the letters
I never asked about them
all I wanted were the stamps
for my stamp book
where was my curiousity?
oh I was curious
but only about such animals
as I could catch
and hold in my own hands
snakes turtles salamanders
and frogs but never people
why not people?
maybe because they seemed
too hard to catch
too hard to hold
in my still childish hands