Generation

I read my parents' letters
in the light of an oil lamp
that flutters in the evening breeze.
The words cast shadows unexpectedly
over the years back to my mid-teens
when everything I spoke
hurt them as deeply
as my own child
now breaks my illusions.

When just the breath is heard
raking across the tightening walls
of my chest,
all things separate from me
and become the paper-thin seascape
of it:
only the one needed hug
or hand held in this growth
of final silences.

Perhaps the shaken sense I have
of the letters in each word
is not advancing age,
but the apprehension
in their own thoughts
wandering through a mined land
I once planted for them.


Barry G. Wick
written possibly in the late 1980s
unknown date