The Day the Eighties Began: Poems 1980-1990 by P.J. Laska, 1991

The Women of the Forties

O those women of the forties,
hard-working women of the forties,
the enchanting smoke of their cigarettes
rises in rings with the everlasting
ebb and flow of human tribes –
for one cigarette lights another.
In nylons and sunglasses they greet me
in photograph memory
with little soldiers and sailors
in tiny uniforms – a private collection
come down for the War.
Out of love and duty
they made me their historian,
taught me how to feel the playful flesh
and how to greet the seasons – all this
I owe to the women of the forties.

—(Excerpted from The Day the Eighties Began: Poems 1980-1990, P.J. Laska. Igneus Press (1991))