Having to Find Myself

(This poem is written from the perspective of a young soldier in the Civil War.  The constant changing of tent-mates a stark reminder of death at every turn).


I am having to
find myself;
trying
to remember
who
it was that
stood at my side
only just

this morning –

as we struggled toward
the main of the fighting –

amid the dark,
dreamlike fog
of trying to swim past
the un-sureness in
my soul –
in all our souls and
across every living
thing that is standing
on this our present
battlefield.

You have seen this,
Walt,
a thousand, thousand times
you have seen this
in your ambling wander
through the great
stretches of the war that
we set ourselves to –

amid the trickling
flood of the chaoses
of the skirmish
and all the mismatch
of impressions and
intentions.

He was a young
man – that I know –
not unlike myself;
but,
his name,
his name is not
close upon my lips –

not anywhere in the air
about the me
that I have become.

He had only just
moved into my tent –
but
a
day ago
or so –

and his name,
his name
I do not know.

He took the bed
of my earlier
friend,

that friend that
only just fell

himself to
his death;
his lonely
solitary death on
the bloody gravel
just beyond
our morning fire.

One day,
a bed belongs
to a friend,
and the next
a stranger finds
his way into it –

a placeholder against
the clouds of purpling,
black powder and lead
of shot.

Walt, O Walt,
peripatetic sage
of these democratic
shores and flowers,
how have you written
this anguish into
parchment with
your pen?

How have you shared
this desperate, ragged, and
suffering condition with the
mothers and the fathers
of the fallen?

We saw you here,
tending
the lads
who were dying.
We saw you
take to pen
to share a son’s
last words with
his ma and with
his pa.

I wonder where
the souls come from
that inhabit all of
these constantly
changing
bodies –

constantly
changing
forms
of God.

Is there some dank
emotion that a land must
feel, that a land
must envelope

at the exact moment
of each death or
whisper of decay;

as the youth which
grew upon it
fall down
in a lifeless heap?
Or does it
pass unnoticed?

Which the worse?
Does some act of love
or whimsy encourage
a dour mood in a man
that marches him
thus off to war –

off toward the grave
when he ages toward
his manhood –

toward his own final
independence?

Is there some
turn of the face – away
from the direction of
the eyes –

that does instill
a calamitous decline
at just that moment?

His step was furtive
and unsure that morning
as we left the campfire.

He turned anxiously
from one side to the
other; looking for some
veiled hint of approval
from those who stood
at his boot – those he
called friend.
Sentinels at his
left and
at his right.

It was that instance of
doubt that made him
hesitate –
just where
to point his gun,
just where to thrust
his bayonet.

It was then,
Walt,
in that instant
of the instance
of his hesitation
that he fell to the
ground – the ground
on which we both stood –

dead. Just and only
dead.

Write him, Walt,
write them all
an elegy that
will keep us
from doing this
all again –
from doing this
even one more day.

Write him, Walt,
in a way that will help
me remember who
he was and who it
was who took his bed.

For, I am undone
and cannot find
my way

April 1865. "Cold Harbor, Virginia. Collecting remains of dead on the battlefield after the war."Memento mori. Wet plate by John Reekie.