Today's poem is by John Philip Drury

The Civil War Goes On
        In memory of Robert Altman

They haven't bathed since 1863—
Rebel and Union reenactors massed
near Gettysburg to mimic history,
calling themselves hardcore, eating hardtack,
pouring powder and blanks down musket barrels,
jamming ramrods, attaching percussion caps
to metal nipples that hammers strike for sparks.
They'd like a do-over, but there's a script
to follow, orders from dead generals.

They're in some pasture, not the battlefield
itself, too holy, packed with monuments.
It looks like county fairgrounds, where the land
has sprouted shooting galleries and rides.
No landmarks here. No Cemetery Ridge.
No Devil's Den or Little Round Top. Nothing
but a wide, rolling field that's suitable
for Pickett's Charge. Rebels look optimistic.
They came in minivans and pickup trucks
and pitched their realistic, smelly tents,
a bivouac of impersonators, women
in gingham dresses mending uniforms,
a sergeant yawning in a union suit
as red as blood that none of them will spill
except by accident. There's General Lee!
He circulates on Traveller, cheers the troops.
Confederates serving in the Stonewall Brigade
are southern, but their home's Ontario.
They're sweating by a campfire they've ignited
the old way, flint-and-steel or friction matches.
The morning's hot. The weather will be brutal
today, the anniversary of the battle.

Some girls are serving in the infantry.
The men did not say farewell to their sweethearts,
as in a Currier and Ives engraving,
but brought them here. And after "Taps," some tents
are rollicking with sex and shots of bourbon,
girlfriends and wives who have to reenact
the roles of General Hooker's "public women."
Others, though, disapprove and mind their children,
peeking under tent flaps to request
Please keep it down. We'd like to get some sleep.

Some of the Northern troops are integrated,
and every temporary soldier knows
the works of Shelby Foote and how to load
a musket with a Minié ball, attach
a bayonet, and march along dirt roads.
Friends tell jokes. But nobody can tell
an enemy by uniform alone.
It's always brother versus brother, always
Cain and Abel, fighting over rights
and property—not slaves, this time, but Hey!
That woman there you're trying to get drunk,
buddy, is mine, you butt-faced motherfucker.

Artillery is firing thunderous blanks,
volleying, gray lines and blue batteries,
companies marching toward objectives, hill
or tree line, bugles calling, some troops singing,
women watching through binoculars,
cavalry charging by, their sabers raised.
When shots go off, some soldiers fall and die—
how strange to drive so far and die so fast.
Where's the fake blood? How long must they play dead?
Then there's another sound. A siren blares.
An ambulance is racing across the fray
to aid a corporal who has just passed out.
The heat has started claiming casualties.
There's General Lee! He finds a handkerchief,
lifts up his hat (troops cheer, Huzzah, Marse Robert!),
wiping off sweat and wanting a mint julep.
Troops are wheeling, double-timing, charging
the enemy positions, falling on cue
and acting dead. And then it starts to rain.
Troops panic. It's a rout! Back to their camps
and vans they scurry, slipping in sudden mud,
canteens clanking, public address announcer
pleading for calm, for units to assemble.
It's what they call a general retreat.
No one has won. But someone's sprinting back,
splashing through puddles to the battlefield—
a body's lying motionless in mud.
Turned over, it's an infantry commander,
and he's not faking it, his guts blown open.
Real ammunition. Someone's loaded musket
has imitated war in all its glory.

At this point, though, the film is not half over.
Detectives mass, cordoning off the crime scene,
and everyone must reenact what happened,
first in interrogations—witnesses
in soggy uniforms—and then in flashbacks:
fights in basement rec rooms, sex in motels,
guns bought at swap meets, truck stop parking lots,
the undertow of silent threats at parties.
A friend or enemy could have fired the shot,
following orders of a cheating spouse
or acting on his own initiative,
punishing the wicked, prosecuting
a war that's secretive and personal.
And maybe someone's caught, and maybe not,
rain falling through the smoke of discharged weapons,
even though all but one round have been blanks.

Mud, blood, smoke, rain. The civil war goes on
throughout the turning, turbulent republic,
with muted feuds and open bouts of loathing
in split communities, as well as here
in Pennsylvania, where the forecast's sunny
for tomorrow, Independence Day.

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Copyright © 2023 John Philip Drury All rights reserved
from The Teller's Cage
Able Muse Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission