Challenging Poetry

Pickett's Charge

after ten miles,
I stood there
in the field where
they once charged,
the men who (after)
lay, more than eight
thousand dead,

and the field was green
and the sun was bright
on the little plaque
telling of hope
and disaster.

and I considered the dead
and my aches (ten miles
in sneakers is nothing
to the dead),

and wondered that
the blood soaking that field
didn't stain my feet red.

Author's Note ▶︎

line count: 19
prompt: hike

when I was 16, we were camping near Gettysburg, and all the sixteen year olds got to go on a ten mile hike through the field where Pickett's charge happened at the end of the three days of the battle. I don't remember too much about the day or the info that we read across the battlefield, but I remember that the field looked so innocent and so long to attack such a well defended position, and it should have felt sad or cathedral like, but instead, it felt like a place to hold a picnic. I'm not sure the poem goes far enough into there. ah well.