Thank You Elizabeth Poem by Jim Yerman

When she discovered the letters…she immediately had to catch her breath…
each letter was written by hand
each one beginning…Dear Elizabeth…

The people in the letters have long since passed…only these letters survive…
The first Dear Elizabeth letter was dated…August…1895.

They were from a simpler time…long ago…a slower…harder time when…
people wrote their feelings down on paper…with a pen.

She began to read…Dear Elizabeth…and found the feelings were intense…
The written words like music…filled with grace and eloquence.

Each letter was filled with emotion.
They spoke of family…of love and death…
She read them slowly…savoring every word…every Dear Elizabeth.

As she read she wondered what it must have been like …to live back in an age…
when the words people shared in letters came floating off the page.

And she thought how writing letters to one another was in it's own way a kind of art…
Where words move from paper to lips to ears…bringing joy or sorrow to the heart.

And she thought of a way to pay homage to these letters…and to 1895…
to pay tribute to a time forgotten…and keep both legacies alive…

Which is why she passes on these stories…stories of life and love and death
and why after each story is repeated…
we all whisper…
thank you, Elizabeth.