Dark Garden

          Dark Garden

                       Amherst, 1864

Night falls fast, the colors flee.

The dark trees stand like sentinels:

Against the stars the evergreens.

The new stone church across the way

Looms like a huge fortress, just

Black against the radiant heavens.

It is witching hour and the people

Are in motion, fleeing to their

Homes, to read the news on paper

And not see what the next train

Will bring. “Why on Earth do we fight?”

She asks in her kitchen while baking.

Through the abolition grapevine she

Had heard that southern women have

No cheap flour. “There's not much

To say about it. The war could

Have been fought a different way -

More clever.” Then she spoke of

Plan Anaconda, the scheme of old

General Scott, how to embargo

And strangle those slave-killing

Cotton producers. “And must not

Great Britain enforce her just laws,

And bring slavery to its knees?”

But no, the war rages like a fire,

Wiping out whole settlements.

A woman's life becomes a fatal term,

To bear the boys and watch them die.

And we, of all people, to ever fight

To expand state and church, after all

We had been through in Europe. No!

North America is a fabric of many

Colors, the scarlet thread being

The English that we speak to each.

So I make that my foundry and beat out

My poems. I, too am a refugee from

Tribe and church. Why trust a human

Thought? I'll not fight for a human myth,

Still less for a narrow, mean state or sect.

The Bible is superb literature.

But not a blueprint for further

Conquest. By the sword we seek peace,

But only under liberty.

                                              By J.P.M.