BATTLE-PIECEConfederate monument, Ocean Pond, Olustee, Florida, 1864Picnickers 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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