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BATTLE-PIECE
Confederate monument, Ocean Pond, Olustee, Florida, 1864
Picnickers sojourn here an hour,
get their fill, get gone.
Seldom, they quickstep as far downhill
as this bivouac; they miss sting, snap,
grit in clenched teeth, carbine, cartridge,
cap, hurrah boys. Cannon-crack's
the peal, the clap of doom.
Into the billows, white, filthy,
choked by smoke, Clem, Eustace, Willy -
it would be useless to name names or call them all.
Anyway, that's done already. Every fall
sons of sons and reverent veterans' wives
lay wreaths, a prize of plastic daisies,
everlasting. Nobody calls this lazy.
It's August, and it's late, it's afternoon,
heat-mist glistens on slick granite, sun
fingers through sleek pines, their edges cropped
like the clipped, elegant grass. It is a shock
to see a caisson blown
to flinders; a horse shrieks,
the mortar-shell zooms, spiral-
ripping tender belly. Oh, yes, here
are raked paths, cindered, sweet trees
and cool water. That whimper
you do not hear now was the doves,
spooning. Evening calls you all, eager
as spruce-gum-chewing, apple-filching boys
to pull one long last gulp of switchel
as if, now, somebody's sons had almost done
haying. Keen to victual, nearly home, feature the sharp
surprise when, smooth as oiled stone
stroking the clean edge of a scythe, these boys achieved
each his marble pillow, astonished by the sky.
First published in Shenandoah; anthologized in Michael Meyer's textbook Poetry: An Introduction, St. Martins, 2005-; Spikenard.
Return to Index of Jeannette Barnes poems
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