One Afternoon in the American Civil War
       

Says Private Joe to Clara Barton "Why me
and not thee in this mud and blood losing
my life under these unusual trees pulling
the sun down and I'll be dead and never know
what happened to my boys and did they die
and where's my musket and how will I shoot it
without my hands and my leg is burning
so much and God it's already lost and the sun
keeps falling into those trees please tell them
Miss Clara I'm good I swear oh God I'm good."
But Miss Clara was already gone and the war itself
soon ended and Lincoln was shot and everyone
moved on and then came a hundred years
of Jim Crow and Two World Wars and almost
a Third and somewhere in all this you were born
and picked up an education and maybe
you work in the city or live in some town
where the roads are wide and sometimes
showing us the way and sometimes not
but always leading us on to that larger place
where the things they did are never done.

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Copyright © 2017 Henry Crawford All rights reserved
from American Software
CW Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission