The Ghosts of the Confederacy
       

Stir along the ridge tops and sunken lanes
like dreams remembered upon waking.

They pitch shadowy tents in southern pines
amid twilight campfires and darting fireflies.

Southern children grow up believing the ghosts are family.
Part of the tapestry that knits their DNA together.

They are schooled daily in bittersweet nostalgia—
uniforms and lost causes. As grounded in the now

as Gone with the Wind and Elvis Presley.
Southern children are rarely surprised by love or loss

or gray ghosts that climb down from monuments on red moon nights
to chase tattered flags across endless fields of wildflowers.

Generations of Southern children have learned to accept
these battles that fade like watercolors left out in the rain.

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Copyright © 2020 Richard Peabody All rights reserved
from Guinness on the Quay
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission