Tabula Rasa - fran claggett-holland

[Larry Robinson]

Tabula Rasa

Children are no longer taught
to write cursive. That beautiful hand of my father’s,
no less impressive when he signed a check
as when he signed his letters and reports.
And my mother’s hand, learned the Palmer way,
“move your hand from the elbow,” she told me,
demonstrating on the kitchen table. 
I never could even approximate her beautiful script
now preserved, along with my father’s love letters 
in the trunk In my garage. 

Letter after letter, back and forth,
they wrote, passionate and private, never imagining 
their children would one day sit and read them aloud,
marveling at their youth, their ardor, their 
carefully drawn words, their own calligraphy.

A hundred years later, my brother and I,
sitting at the old round oak table,
read in tandem, these words of passion, of love,
of forever, written by these two strangers,
our parents.

       - fran claggett-holland

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