Dead Confederate

Currently I am living in Yellowstone National Park, and I have had every intention of writing poetry about the park. But it seems I cannot stop writing about the south.

We were alone chasing the daylight, those last fleeting moments of the sun.

We were alone pretending that the moon didn’t scare us, as we played in battlefields from long ago.

I kissed you softly believing in every word you sang.

This is my fear reaching up and choking me.

Like the ones who died long ago.

 

Dead confederate, old rebel soul.

I’ll miss you when the Spanish moss is gone.

Those bayous calling us both back from our graves.

More victims with tombstones for eyes.

Searching for death with an uneven hand.

 

I used to hear the stories of your death.

Your birth overshadowed by those last breathes.

I wish I could have known you.

Like you knew me before I was even born.

Your blood boiling in my southern veins.

 

I lost myself back there in that time.

Searching for a man who carried your name.

Lost, yet protected by your ghost.

When he looked in my eyes and saw you and her staring back.

 

Gone, gone, gone.

Like soft southern songs.

Gone, gone, gone.

Like the fires that raged here long ago.

 

That consumed two southern and northern souls.

Dead confederate, that’s all they’ll ever know.