“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late
And how can man die better
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods”



Soft murmurs along the front line crackle like a broken prairie plough,
The maples and oaks snapping with
Every burst of the cannon.
Crested breaths choked out by
The ferocious blasts of this entrenched
Jungle.
Shrieks punctuate the deathly silence,
And sobers the divisions thirst for war.
I, a dead soul among the living.

The soft wind at night is the nefarious fingers of death,
Soaking the earth and ****** boughs
Of the old oaks with the veins
Of golden purity.

(I am standing on an eagles skull.)

I can hear the Rebel yell beyond the tree line,
BLASTING the barreling notion of liberty,
Stacked within our Union souls.

A Bundren coffin takes form in the mist beyond the wasteland.

My kin lay wait at home,
Shall I return one day and parade through pastures
And creeks until the days grow old
and so shall I.
With kin side by side.

My vacant mind floats off to distant lands along the
timbered forests of the Free North.


Orations from my Grandfather resonate like wind chimes
Rattling among the inner confines of my sanity,
Strewn images flash like the lines of Virginian regulars,
A sparse reminder of my ever so soon fate
In the Wilderness.