If you served, you know how it was,

holidays especially, the thoughtfulness.

Packages with gloves and warm socks,

if you drew the cold-weather ticket.

Packages with shorts and towels,

swimsuits, suited for island hopping.

 

Littering the landscape, anywhere

and everywhere, were other packages,

scattered after the shells and bullets,

the myriad instruments of destruction,

were removed and put to use

removing limbs and lives of strangers.

 

If you stayed on the home-front, waited

for letters written in hasty breaks

or the long hurry-up-and-waits,

you also lived with the buried fear of

the dreaded telegram or CO’s letter,

the heaviness of packages returned.

 

(after an unattributed 1944 photograph of Christmas packages for soldiers who have been killed or are missing in action)