I waited for the afternoon newspaper to arrive,

The St. Louis Star-Times, flung like a grenade

onto our porch. I opened it to see photos of

starving P.O.W.s liberated from a prison camp

somewhere far away, on an island far away,

far away from our little house in the Heartland.

That newspaper is no longer with us, gone

like childhood, grandma, and even her Bible.

Entranced with newspapers, harbingers

of visual and verbal stimuli, I loved to look

at the photos and studied the Fronts– broken

lines and arrows in maps of the Pacific Theater.

Such a neat phrase: the Pacific Theater,

where ships and sharks jostled for attention,

and pictures of handsome young guys in

khaki uniforms caught my eye. A newspaper,

radio, and LIFE Magazine contained what

I wanted. Yet, photos die, as does a theater.

–Mary Kennan Herbert

The author’s poems have appeared in many literary and professional journals 

around the world. She was the invited poet at the 60th Anniversary 

World War II Conference at Siena College, in 1998.