The
walk home was long
across
a landscape devastated
destroyed
afraid and he found
himself
having to beg because
his
money was considered
counterfeit
worthless confederate.
The
walk from Appomattox
to
Brookhaven took eight months
through
the winter, and arriving,
finally,
he found the family
gone,
others claiming the homestead,
land
fallow, little growing. Told to go
west,
he crossed the Mississippi
and
the Red, to find his way
to
east Texas, largely spared if
occupied.
The family, operating
a
general store in a nameless time,
farmers
become shopkeepers,
and
they didn’t know him.
He
was 17.
Photograph by Karen Arnold via Public
Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
An undercurrent of sadness in this rather tender poem of war's consequences.
ReplyDeleteThis made me think that, no matter how or why we leave a place or people, we usually expect those places or people to remain the same while we are away.
ReplyDeleteAnd the people that stay, expect the person to return without change.
Odd, isn't it?