All Posts Tagged With: "poetry"
A Leaf
Tonight I met an eighty-five year old friend of my grandfather named Oscar Plummer. Mr. Plummer served in World War II, fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and was awarded the Purple Heart. While at war, he regularly wrote poetry to his young bride who was waiting in central Illinois. Several of these poems were published in a local newspaper.
We had a wonderful conversation where he shared a story from the final days of the war. Mr. Plummer was a Sergeant on patrol when he saw three young, uniformed Germans coming out of the woods. They were unarmed, cold, hungry and offering their surrender. All involved knew the war was ending within the week. Seargeant Plummer said, “if I accepted your surrender, I’m not even sure where we would take you.” He advised them to return to the woods, find some local farmers and do their best to swap their uniforms for plain clothes and return to their homes. They took him up on it, and he said that to this day he wonders if they made it home.
During dinner, this long-retired warrior-poet recieted a short poem. It appears below with Mr. Plummer’s permission.
A Leaf
When I see a leaf upon a tree,
I believe that leaf is like you and me.
When it is young and green and strong,
the wind can blow it all day long.
And as the wind blows it, most every day,
it bends and clings to the limb to stay.
But when it gets older and becomes dry and brittle,
it falls dead to the ground when the wind blows a little.
The smoke when its burned floats up to the sky,
just like our souls whenever we die.