These Are The Boys Who Will Never Grow Old

The Boys Who Will Never Grow Old.

These are the faces of the boys who will never grow old.

In fading photographs on mantels and scrapbooks

Taken on Kodaks or maybe a Leica taken off a German officer

In boxes of old letters at a farm auction

They look back at us across the years.

From some place in Germany or an island in the Pacific

V-mail or on old postcards sold on the streets of a destroyed city

Have their mundane words: “Hi Mom and Dad, they sure don’t have farms like we do in Nebraska. I’m well.”

These are the boys who will never grow old. Who were they?