Letter Home No. 3

        —Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Is apple butter as simple
as its name suggests, Mama?
If so, why is it sought after
as though it were a scarce salve
for the tasteless tongue?

No bother.

Twenty-five miles per hour, I drove
through the battlefields where
blue and gray bled-almost tears.
The piled stone walls, the rolling
openness. There was nothing
gray rebels could have hid behind
save another trembling body
or another ginned-up body,
while the round bullet feared not a soul.

At least that's how I imagine it.
There are only graves here, spires,
limestone hunks with bronze scabs
of history and grass
the color of spoiled regret.

And "Lincoln Square" is actually
a circle. Abe remains misunderstood.

Copyright © 2010 Kyle Dargan All rights reserved
from Logorrhea Dementia
The University of Georgia Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission