The Place Where Pickett Charged A Southerner’s Lament

Mine eyes have seen the Glory    of a breeze twelve thousand men wide    brushing its palm across the face    of a gold and grassy green,    issuing forth fresh flaxen waves    to crash on a copse of trees    and a gray stone fence at the field’s far end,    where the pale and purple flowers grow.

Mine eyes have seen the Glory    of the tall oaks on the ridge behind,    standing like Napoleons    before the nature-dressed expanse—    a sun-kissed street of Glory in the Fall.

From the wood run anxious deer,    bouncing ebullient and brave into the open,    until exposure tells of risk and    everlasting sorrowful eyes look back    at the line of trees, then ahead to    the gray stone fence on the opposite ridge    where the pale and purple flowers grow.

Like ordained orphans on a wild dream,    they catch the wind and surge across the field    and disappear into the tall grass and wild weeds,    stirring a massive murder    of crows that foist themselves upward    like black souls winged, screaming and cursing,    clawing up the sky    above the gold and grassy green.

In another field a cow lows,    blowing low on his horns as the great    gold watch slips from its azure purse    and drops into the raging red mist    above the rounded purple mountains.    As the sun boils longer,    the crickets grow gayer,    until the blue sky and the gray shadows    march hand in hand into the inexorable night.

Mine eyes have seen the glory …    An acorn strikes the earth    as if to call distinction between voices imagined    and the ground beneath my feet.    Inside my heart a young boy runs crying,    panicked by a carnage too great to bear.    And I … I walk slowly like an old man to my car    and drive away down Hagerstown Road.    If not for a few decisions and the falling of darkness,    I might have gone across that expanse    to the Copse of Trees and a gray stone fence,    and maybe lingered, maybe stayed …    where the pale and purple flowers grow.