by: Eric Pankey
1. Confederate Dead behind a Stone Wall at Fredericksburg, Virginia
Where the glass negative broke:
A silky, liquid black,
Like spilled scrivener’s ink,
Pools in the print’s margin.
: :
Mouth gone slack, eyes upward,
Face glazed with blood, the man—
Lifeless, slumped, and tangled
In a tarp—looks for God.
: :
Two leafless trees hold up
A scratched sky’s leaden weight.
Autumn? Winter? No wind
To sway the upright trees.
: :
Such a long exposure
To affix the fallen,
(Staged or happened upon,)
Abandoned to this ditch.
2. Wilderness, near Chancellorsville, Virginia
It is a slow process:
fallen and standing trees,
Propped, bent, a clutter of intersections—
All moss- and lichen-ridden,
woodpecker pecked,
Bored by grubs, antler-scraped, bark rubbed free—
Hard to tell from the decay
the living from the dead,
The dead from the almost dead—
A tree—
horizontal across the creek,
Uprooted when a flash flood cut the cut-bank—
Still leaves, blossoms, bears fruit.
Without a buttress,
A long dead sycamore remains upright.
3. Burying the Confederate Dead at Fredericksburg, Virginia
Jesus said, Let the dead bury the dead.
Two caskets and five or six canvas-
Covered bodies wait beside a trench
Three black men have spent all day digging.
Given their druthers, they’d obey scripture.
Where the glass negative broke:
A silky, liquid black,
Like spilled scrivener’s ink,
Pools in the print’s margin.
: :
Mouth gone slack, eyes upward,
Face glazed with blood, the man—
Lifeless, slumped, and tangled
In a tarp—looks for God.
: :
Two leafless trees hold up
A scratched sky’s leaden weight.
Autumn? Winter? No wind
To sway the upright trees.
: :
Such a long exposure
To affix the fallen,
(Staged or happened upon,)
Abandoned to this ditch.
2. Wilderness, near Chancellorsville, Virginia
It is a slow process:
fallen and standing trees,
Propped, bent, a clutter of intersections—
All moss- and lichen-ridden,
woodpecker pecked,
Bored by grubs, antler-scraped, bark rubbed free—
Hard to tell from the decay
the living from the dead,
The dead from the almost dead—
A tree—
horizontal across the creek,
Uprooted when a flash flood cut the cut-bank—
Still leaves, blossoms, bears fruit.
Without a buttress,
A long dead sycamore remains upright.
3. Burying the Confederate Dead at Fredericksburg, Virginia
Jesus said, Let the dead bury the dead.
Two caskets and five or six canvas-
Covered bodies wait beside a trench
Three black men have spent all day digging.
Given their druthers, they’d obey scripture.
_________________________
A poem that I think is appropriate for Memorial Day. It reminds me that Memorial Day is not all about parades and bugles and hot dogs. Memorial Day is something that commemorates both what is best in humanity and what is worst.
Saint Marty thinks everyone should remember this.
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