Tattered
Tattered like an old love letter
Grasped too often in withered fingers
Folded and unfolded in an effort to remember
A long ago romance and those secret trysts
Beneath bowers of summer flowers
And too soon ended by elders
Shocked and scandalized by a love
They could not fathom and could not endure
Existing in the shadows of unsanctioned socialties.
The words in the letter are faded
But what does that matter to the eyes
Of the aged whose life has been tattered
And torn and then reborn in the image
Of what was patently proper in the minds
Of the neighbors and then sent the carriage
That carried her far from the arms of her lover
And trysts beneath bowers of summer flowers
In the long gone days of her youth.
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