An oldie I'd forgotton about until someone was kind enough to comment on it...Thank you Connie !!!

 

She sits alone out on the front porch swing
She stares out at the open fields
Her beauty could have earned her many things
But things to her they just weren't real

He told her long ago of leaving town
He said his dreams just couldn’t wait
He promised he’d be back and kissed her tears away
They both knew it'd never be the same

Hey little princess are you lonely
Is he ever coming home
The summers over and the fields are brown
Can't you feel the cold wind blowin'

She hears the phone ring and she runs inside
She hopes this time it’s really him
She takes a breath and tries to calm herself
But doesn’t answer in the end

Time passes slowly and the years go by
She hardly ever goes to town
Friends come by to see her and stay for tea
They talk of how their kids have grown

John’s boy is thirty now and has a son
Mary is a nurse in Tennessee
Here’s a picture of our grandchildren
The boy in front is only three

They say goodbye and than they drive away
A heavy feeling fills the air
She cleans the dishes and she starts to cry
She doesn’t notice someone’s there

Hey little princess are the words she hears
she thinks its all inside her mind
It seems so real but that’s impossible
A voice that she does feintly recognize

She takes a moment and she can’t resist
She thinks it’s crazy but gives in
She turns around to see a gray-haired man
He asks May I come in

He tells her he enlisted back in ‘66
And that he’d gone to war
How he was captured in Cambodia
And didn’t get out ‘til ‘84

He wandered southeast Asia for a couple years
‘til questioned by police
They turned him over to the embassy
And he was flown home to be de-briefed

His voice starts cracking as he tells her more
He tries so hard to fight the tears
He tells her of the V.A. Hospital
Where he’s lived for twenty years

He shows a torn picture taken long ago
Of a loving couple’s warm embrace
He’d kept it hidden from his captors
A memory that they could not erase

A moment passes with no spoken words
An awkward silence fills the room
They finally both begin to speak at once
Embarrassed laughs relieve the mood

She tells him that she never married
That no other love could be the same
And that she held on to his promise
That he’d come home again

They talk for many hours until finally
A taxi cab pulls up the drive
He writes down his number at the hotel
Than stands up to say goodnight

He asks if it’s alright if he stops by again
She says tomorrow would be fine
And that it might take a while to work things through
After such a long long time

He turns to leave but only takes one step
Than rushes back and pulls her close
They clutch each other desperately
Never wanting to let go

Hey little princess you’re not lonely
You always knew that he’d come home
The seasons changed, the fields are green now
From the seeds your love has sown

Copyright ©2004 Edwin Dante Larson

Reviewed by Connie Hinnen Cook	6/2/2006
I googled the title of my new poem, His Little Princess, and came up with yours. This starts out so sad, but ends with such hope and promise. I thoroughly enjoyed it.