Mount Union

Mt. Union Cemetery, Upper Turkeyfoot Township, PA.

  

Even still, a few

of revolution's sons,

clothes heavy with sweat

from the mote-filled swelter

inside red barns,

bare arms corded

with muscle and vein,

thick-fingered men

with their names eroding

in stone on the hilltop

of Mount Union Cemetery,

rising from the midst

of their farms,

high ground shared

with the corn,

blue-green and gleaming.


Even still, a few men

of the soil and flag,

small on the graves

of the veterans of wars,

big on the pole,

luffing over the hills,

over the barns and the fields,

over the stones and the names,

higher than everything

but the sky with its birds

and its weather,

a few men slowly walking

on paths to their kitchens,

cows slowly filing

out of the parlors from milking,


A few men with the land

on their clothes

and their skin,

a few men with the ground

in their lungs,

a few men near the end

of a day

under swallows

feeding in flight

and late summer clouds

like galleons afloat

on an inverted sea,

a few men

with the deep

cool Earth all around.