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18 gettysburg, 1996 Nearly midnight, driving back from Virginia, the man insisted like a child that we take the next exit and, unlike a child, got his wish. All we knew of that place: turning point, the farthest north that family fight finally got. Headlights aimed at granite markers illuminated names of infantries from distant states. Heat lightning became a monument’s eternal flame, wind-battered, scattering shadows across the plain. This park closes at dusk, a sign warned. How can a mowed field close against the sky? Driving home, silent in the dashboard’s glow, we could not say what we learned at that place. Later, he would say eros and thanatos: what’s more vivid than a young woman strolling on a battlefield, a man’s leather jacket draped on her shoulders? But I saw other things—orchards, cornfields forever razed by the soldiers’ advance, and granting our mistakes and failures of faith, I still yearn to carry a child on this earth. ...

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