About Me

My photo
My wife and I have known each other since the 10th grade and we have 2 children. We've been married over half our lives, I can't imagine it any other way.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Thursday Night and the Baltimore Pike

Southern Pennsylvania,
The bricks of storefronts
From the Civil War radiate
Mid-day heat
Into the autumn evening.

Windows bathe
In the soft light
Of long bulbs in high places.
Calvary swords, moth eaten
Kepis, and dirty Confederate
Bills lounge
On green velvet waiting
For their buyers to be found.

Lifelong lovers,
Their silver hair shining,
Wait in line while chatting,
As a man in a red vest checks tickets
And grants them permission to board
A double decked bus
Painted white with scenes
Of struggle emblazoned on all sides.

A quiet wooden bench stands
At the base of the stairs
To the Wills house.
It guards the entrance
Of where Lincoln slept,
His address freshly written
For the souls and the survivors
Of three bloody days.

It’s here that I sit,
As night envelopes
The roof tops and crawls
To the streets
Slowly heading down the Baltimore Pike,
Bringing rest to the fields
Where the spirit of America sleeps
With its brothers that lie
Beneath red Pennsylvanian soil.

The High Water Mark 6:45 AM

September 23rd,
Dawn has arrived
No one has told the crickets,
Their cadence echoes through the fog like distant cannons.
Soft mist brushes
My cheeks and covers
My hands.



Autumns colors hiding
Fog rolls like soft silk
Across the weed covered
Ground, around the boulders,
And through the spokes
Of cannon wheels.



I feel the hills
I cannot see.
Their arms surround the space
That saved our country.
Those hills hold
The souls of brothers
Fathers, and sons
Sacrificing themselves in early July
So long ago,
That today I may stand
Free, thankful,
American.