In July my husband and I took a side trip to Philadelphia and Gettysburg before meeting my family in North Carolina for our biennial reunion.  He has enjoyed reading about the Civil War, so we were excited to have the chance to stay in Gettysburg itself (right next to the house where Abraham Lincoln polished his famous address!).  We hired a personal guide who took us chronologically through the fields and ridges of those three fateful days.

It was sobering, of course.  The next morning I penned a couple of poems about my thoughts.

Gettysburg I

On a tour of the battlefield

the chess moves of Meade and Lee

were described, the relentless

volley of bullets and mortar

faintly sounding, letting up

in periods of advance and retreat.

The thud of our sons’ shattered bodies

meeting the soil of planted acres

assaults any noble thought of

war’s elusive aspirations.

The ends cannot justify any means.

They are one and the same.

Ends of lives and hope,

meanness exposed

after the smoke clears.

It is hard to justify what is no longer there.

Gettysburg II

There is endless analysis

of the strategies and circumstances

of a battle waged on ordinary hills.

What I will remember is

our guide explaining such simple factors

with enormous consequences:

the assumption that guns were loaded

when they weren’t, the lighting of

cannon fuses that were defective,

the failure to send a message.

Mostly the refusal of a handful of leaders to quit.