Stacey N. Binning (nee Jones)

FOREVER LOVE

“Darling, I’m coming home”, the telegram read;
She was overcome with joy.
She’d been two years without her man,
Raising three girls and a boy.
It was a war; he had to go;
She knew that from the start.
The war, the madness, was spreading fast,
Tearing lives apart.
Her heart was almost lost,

That day in ‘44,
When she learned that he’d been shot;
Was he gone forevermore?
The bullet hit his hand,
Smashed it all to bits;
His life was spared, his family saved,
Only by his wits.

Now he’s home, safe and sound,
His family by his side,
Thanking the Lord for sparing his life
When so many others had died.

“Darling, I’m coming home”, the telegram had read,
As if it were to say,
That love which can survive a war,
Is here, forever, to stay.

Author’s Note: Explanation. My Grandpa, whom I’ve mentioned in the poem, took a bullet to his right hand in France in ‘44. It was a tangled mass, and he lived only because he kept his cool and stopped the flow of the blood coming out of the wound. The second MASH unit he was able to go to put his hand back together rather nicely (especially during that time). He has a scar around his wrist and his pointer finger is slightly shorter than it should be, but I’d rather have a grandpa with an imperfect hand than none at all! Oh, and yes, my grandma was raising my three aunts and one uncle; my mom was born in ‘47 (‘cause a cockroach ate the condom, my grandparents say. lol).