July 2nd
As then - hot, sultry
Woodland summer.
From Devil’s Den my boy and I
Crossed Bloody Run through the marshy
Valley of Death.
Shoes dipped muck, we swore
And came onto a road with wet, black socks
Perhaps even as
They.

In a corn row
On Cemetary Ridge
Found a rusted buckle.
At “The Angle”, strained
To hear that Rebel yell across fields of wheat
But saw only a bright bug on a
Milkweed
And cars going by on the Emmitsburg Pike.

That night we slept in wet weeds and fog
And at dawn relieved ourselves behind the
Sixth Wisconsin’s
Granite Plinth.

July 3rd
Now on Seminary Ridge
One hundred twenty years to the hour
Picketts Charge!
The Army of Northern Virginia
Whose trees yet hide hearts of lead.

Around us, an impalpable Past
Shimmered mirage-like in the Sun
(Did you hear faint bugles on the fainter breeze?)
We strained, sweat starting
But the Present gave the Lie
And Comprehension, denied, fled over the field
Where the bug yet clung to yesterday’s
Milkweed
And a tourist bus blocked our view.

B.W. Powell July, 1983

(Accepted for publication, BLUE UNICORN. June, 1984)