The Mockingbird

We killed another mockingbird today.

It sang until we stole its breath away.

How long will we be tolerant of this?

We blind ourselves, for ignorance is bliss.

Upon the mockingbirds the bluejays tread,

Screeching loud until their song is dead.

How long can they endure and we oppress?

At their expense must we gain happiness?

We'll kill another mockingbird tomorrow.

We'll fill another heart with screaming sorrow,

Unless the jays may heed the Finch's word:

It is a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Unless we stop this horror long-entrenched

And let the power from our hand be wrenched,

The mockingbird will ever fear the jay,

And sing until we steal its breath away.

T. G. 6/2/20

Gettysburg

Surely the shells never shattered the silence
Of these slopes, grass-strewn; this solemn sky
Cannot have canopied the cannon-fire
And cavalry charges, musket-shots — can it?
We went to war with one another, brother
Firing leaden rounds into his brother,
In farmlands, fresh-seeding crops of corn, barns
Burning as the shrapnel shattered them.
And yet no echo of those blasts now shakes
The mournful hills; the fences quiver not
Beneath the thunderous dust of Pickett's charge;
The graves of the fallen, gray stone under blue sky,
Lie undisturbed by musket-ball; and yet
The struggle has not ended for which they died.

T. G. 12/31/19