Gettysburg

The flow of life buckles
Into the Greater World
Through this lace of grasses
Past the landscape of loneliness into Light.

Here the soldiers drilled on Indian's sacred
Ground, their unspooled lives
Whitened in terror on the anvil
Of experience.

Battle-plundered youth cheated of all sweet journeys
Into loving passion with their tangled
Reasons of the heart. Frieze
Like groupings of the dead

Still cast their spell of triumph
Far from crowds
At play and drift in the silence
At the heart of night.

We feel their presence in dark dreams
Rushing their ethereal forms
Against the edges of life's streams.
(Their sabers gleam in flashes of blue light).