Nov 2011
GETTYSBURG MEMORIES
A forest dense, wooded, trees dry and broken on the leaf-scattered floor,
Silence, birds sing, wings flutter, but no other sound to break the spell.
But is it really the quiet that makes one question his senses?
The history, the pain, suffering long ago endured, don’t you feel it?
Men, lying prone on this very spot, the ground beneath your feet, absorbing the lifeblood of who knows how many.
And we ask why? We who have our own cause, our own drums to beat.
They too, had a cause, right or wrong, it was THEIR cause, and a feverent belief that was strong enough to die for. Would we do that?
If one listens with his emotions, and tunes into what happened there, the silence is broken, the smoke, the sights and sounds of battle can be brought back to us in terror filled dreams.
A fallen brother, gun in hand can be imagined lying with the picture of a wife or sweetheart clutched to his slowly beating heart.
A shout, an order given, the troops move on to yet another skirmish, leaving behind, broken pieces of this very forest, still standing as a monument to those who believed.
And now as we stand in these time-endured battlefields, nothing has changed. We feel the sorrow for those young souls too soon released to the unknown, but also, we feel something else. Is it just the silence that invades our minds with these long forgotten visions of battle and death? Or are we being reminded by the spirit of those champions of their cause, not to forget that they fought and died here and to remember also the commitment that brought them to this spot in the first place.
So, we turn, walk away out of the trance-like spell, and when it is broken, we shake ourselves free, and ask, “Was I there? Did I feel those things?”
It was a memory, but whose memory was it?
A forest dense, wooded, trees dry and broken on the leaf-scattered floor,
Silence, birds sing, wings flutter, but no other sound to break the spell.
But is it really the quiet that makes one question his senses?
The history, the pain, suffering long ago endured, don’t you feel it?
Men, lying prone on this very spot, the ground beneath your feet, absorbing the lifeblood of who knows how many.
And we ask why? We who have our own cause, our own drums to beat.
They too, had a cause, right or wrong, it was THEIR cause, and a feverent belief that was strong enough to die for. Would we do that?
If one listens with his emotions, and tunes into what happened there, the silence is broken, the smoke, the sights and sounds of battle can be brought back to us in terror filled dreams.
A fallen brother, gun in hand can be imagined lying with the picture of a wife or sweetheart clutched to his slowly beating heart.
A shout, an order given, the troops move on to yet another skirmish, leaving behind, broken pieces of this very forest, still standing as a monument to those who believed.
And now as we stand in these time-endured battlefields, nothing has changed. We feel the sorrow for those young souls too soon released to the unknown, but also, we feel something else. Is it just the silence that invades our minds with these long forgotten visions of battle and death? Or are we being reminded by the spirit of those champions of their cause, not to forget that they fought and died here and to remember also the commitment that brought them to this spot in the first place.
So, we turn, walk away out of the trance-like spell, and when it is broken, we shake ourselves free, and ask, “Was I there? Did I feel those things?”
It was a memory, but whose memory was it?
I wrote this as I was sitting on a log at Little Round Top in Gettysburg as we toured the battlefields....I was alone and it was quiet and still in the leafy forest..I found a scrap of paper in my bag, and the words just came tumbling out..as soon as I had a chance, I rewrote it and this is the result..
