Susanne and I just returned from a cruise and one of our
stops was Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is a beautiful city which
still retains some of the flavor of the antebellum era.
We often think of the Civil War as ancient history. It was a
period that defined us as a nation but also marked the loss of so many of our
citizens in a brutal conflict.
It does not seem so far away to me, however, when I walk the
battlefields and visit cities like Charleston. There is only one degree of
separation between me and that war. My great grandmother was a small child in
1865 and occasionally spoke to me about what she remembered of the soldiers
returning home, and the impact it had on her life in a small Maine village.
The war drained the economies of both rural and city areas
in the north and south. It chewed up young men like cordwood in a bonfire, and
left families and farms unable to function.
She talked to me of watching young men, now old, returning
from the battles .
Homecoming-1865
is a new poem I have written about her recollection of one of those incidents.
The event still resonates with me 150 years after the fact, and I dare say
there is probably no degree of separation from the emotional journeys that are
traveled today by many of the soldiers we send to war.
Glenn K. Currie
Homecoming-1865
She stood barefoot in
the dirt road
Watching a blue
scarecrow approach.
The straw was missing
from one arm,
And his bearded face
framed eyes
Of anthracite that
burned the light:
Leaving it in ashes.
Dust devils swirled
around his legs,
Trying to swallow
him, but their assaults
Fell beneath his
plodding steps.
He passed the little
girl without a word,
Disappearing slowly
over the hill,
One of many ghosts,
dead and alive.
Her mother said the
young men
Were returning from
the war.
They would help bring
in the harvest.
When the child asked
if this would be
A celebration, she
replied,
“Perhaps the end of
mourning.”
Copyright 2015 Glenn K. Currie
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