This poem was written by my Aunt. This is the same woman that sent my mother poetry books for me, giving me my love poetry and many other things like; needlepoint, shameless swearing, and provocative conversation.

She writes on her page at civilwarhaiku.com:

There is a wooded hill near my house. Sometimes, standing there, I imagine this quiet vista come alive with Civil War ghosts. Looking down the hill, I seem to see the smoke, hear the roar, and smell the fetid odor of men taking each other apart. To cope with this haunting vision, I wrote this haiku ode. I offer it to honor their struggle.

Only a horse died

Before the white flag fluttered

Over Fort Sumter

Eighteen sixty-one

April came in stormy then

Four-thirty, the twelfth

Pre-dawn it shattered

The uneasy peace they knew

When long darkness came

The blue and the gray

Made a hundred shades of red

The colors of war

There is no hatred

Deeper than between brothers

So close the distance

Wicked is the edge

That divides the human heart

From that which it loves

Loud days upon them

When war whispers turned to howls

And all were made deaf

War is failure’s price

When words cannot sway the will

Currency of blood

Enfilade sweeps far

Merciless arcs through the line

Cleaving open souls

A nation born free

Yet to embrace enslavement

Had to be reborn

Vessels can be weak

Their ship was unseaworthy

They were seamen still

Defeat’s patina

Of melancholic brooding

Is theirs to cherish

Valor on both sides

Is honored in human hearts

That grasp the horror

Though rebellion shown

Courage worthy of respect

Their deaths not in vain

Defeat assured us

Of a strong United States

Safe from division

Boys’ hands hold aloft

The fragile rag ennobled

Death will make them men

The flag was sodden

Wet with blood and morning dew

Cloth so creased with pain

Only yesterday

It whipped the air unaware

Of its frailty

When the stripes and bars

And stars and colors flying

Unfurl no more

Bullets and disease

Twin conspirators of death

War’s dark handmaidens

Dry and hard as bone

Hardtack, spit-wet to choke down

Their staple of life

A sizzle in fat

“Worm-castles” when vermin-filled

Such is nourishment

Shoeless, cold, in rags

These no gallant uniforms

Not so handsome now

No jaunty marches

But leaden boredom and dread

And hungry half-sleep

Hear the roar, the roar

Rebel yell, Yankee cannon

The death of silence

Battlefield names

Once towns innocent of blood

Tinged now with horror

Fredericksburg’s ghosts moan

Cry out across the freeways

Faint amid new noise

They can still be heard

The decibels of anguish

Humming in the din

Tattered, shattered air

Shrapnel whipping through bowed trees

A bruised sky, wounded

Through murderous paths

And biting pointed acres

Courage propelled them

On and on they came

It is sad to kill such men

Brutal tasks of war

So many limbs fell

Some with leaves and some without

Mingled on the ground

Mangled on the ground

July’s high beauty besmirched

With bird song and sobs

Sherman hated war

“It is all Hell, boys” he said

Man-made Hell on Earth

“Make it bad enough

To make it over sooner”

An orgy of death

Bodies know the rage

Of disease which is war too

Fever took his son

To anguish Sherman

So hated and beloved

In his pained madness

What Lee said was true

“We shall grow too fond of it”

The glory of war

The best it brings out

“Good that it be terrible”

Hate’s lustful passion

In the wilderness

The madness and the horror

Where is glory then?

It lies in knowing

There are things worth fighting for

Worthy of valor

Two days at Shiloh

Earthly days to rival Hell

Amid peach blossoms

Bereft of mercy

Lay carpets of the dying

‘Til tears turned to rain

Shenandoah screamed

From Sheridan’s ruthless torch

Embers drenched in blood

“Dead on the field”

Such words to echo in air

Heart-breaking Autumn

The bloodiest day

Antietam’s harvest of souls

And shamed victory

Cold Harbor, cold heart

Chilled by time’s swift, blunt slaughter

Breath-taking carnage

Guns with no bullets

Caused Chamberlain’s fearful cry

For the bayonet

Faced the wicked slope

Of hot, roaring raging air

And go in to it

To be in Hell then

Could be no worse than that day

On Little Round Top

Oh, doomed Sultana

Victory could not save you

From water and flame

And proud arrogance

So the waves took you under

To perish unsung

Six – hundred thousand

Did close their eyes forever

The future not theirs

Not to see the start

Of a new United States

Without slavery

And without these men

Who slept in their early graves

So much treasure gone

They killed each other

With ecstasies of hatred

Tornadoes of rage

After the battles

They would have to meet again

Now as countrymen

And look past raw wounds

Past anger, shame and fury

This took valor too

Through their pain and death

They erased geography

And made us one land

Now to make foemen

Be as brothers once again

Tragedy must bind

Chastened by fire

A nation made more sacred

By its suffering

Our national wound

Young bones moulder in old graves

We still bear the scars

Pioneer nation

Our infant experiment

Freedom’s light on Earth

Our America

Withstood her great upheaval

From her knees she rose

A solemn purchase

The price was blood and sorrow

To weld a nation

And make it unite

Through common pain and healing

Unbowed, free and one