Maybe the Colonel is a General to his Southern Belle, but their love doesn't give a damn about rank, as Rhett Butler would have said leaving Tara House...

My dearest one, your letter arrived!!!
by luck’s fluke perhaps after months
of a parchment envelope wandering,
it came like a light through the smoke
on fields sowed with so many pains
and with the voices of men in sorrow,
that you letter arrived, a miracle one,
to a desperate soldier wishing hope.

In my tent after rereading many times
I lie down and let my eyes be closed
and remember the sound of your feet
going to the river through the forest,
your flaming hair, wild and exploding
like thousand desires that one must,
like wildfires, put down quick, before
being consumed like a curious moth.

My nose still remember the jasmines
on the garden that summer’s Camelot
when you disrobed under the moon
like a new Venus, but one more soft,
unabashed but in nakedness blushing
trembling, expecting one love’s ghost
to come near and whisper in your ear
wrapped in the finest brandy, my words.

You heard coming from not very afar
when my clothes felt, and my sword,
I was then, with unconditionally surrender
answering to your most silent of calls,
taking you in my arms like a frozen man
will embrace in agony a burning log,
our skin melted then and your fiery kiss
took me away to another and better world.

Who will get to you first, this loving letter
or myself, riding with a prayer and a horse,
racing through forest of scarred magnolias
to untie and pull away that lavender gown,
and go into thy like a tongue of roaring fire
because that’s what I felt and before felt not,
to feel again your arms and legs around,
like a perfumed orchid wrapping an old oak.