Spotlight: Poetry
Antietam
By Susan Hannen
We decided on a whim at eight in the morning on a perfect August day to take the exit leading to the battlefield. Sitting in a glass-fronted room Overlooking the Bloody Lane and the cornfield, where twenty-two thousand men died in eleven hours, we followed the sweep of Ranger Chuck’s arm as it moved from the white Quaker meeting house to the only farm in sight. This, he told us, had been abandoned before dawn on the day of Armageddon. From the Bloody Lane where the Irish Brigade got trapped and slaughtered we walked to the small family cemetery and read the dates on weathered stones to see if anyone had died at the Battle of Antietam, any farmhands or a grandmother of a heart attack. But most of the family it seemed died long before or after. Looking out over the bee heavy fields, I was sure that I would see a boy that day, in raggedy clothes with a blue or gray cap, rise up from the stunned green grass, nourished by all that wasted blood in a battle deemed a draw at sundown.
SUSAN HANNEN is an English instructor at Erie Community College City Campus. She lives in Woodlawn.
•••
Peregrine on the Niagara University Campus
By Mary E. Furlong
I felt its presence before I saw it-a sharp blow from behind That buckled my knees as muscular wings beat the air close To the ground. Off to the right, a stout evergreen quivered Like an aspen, sharing the panic of whatever refugee sought Safety in its highest limbs. The pursuer stopped below, And a crowd gathered on the sidewalk as if to take notes On an impromptu lecture. It glowered at us all, shoulders Hunched in feathered robe, distaining to address an Academe that knew neither Latin nor Greek. At last it rose up And arced away into the blue afternoon, a slim parenthesis Of wings. “It was a sign” someone said, whereupon the crowd Divided — those of us who’d seen the frenzy in the evergreen From those who had not.
Children’s book author and short-story writer MARY E. FURLONG lives in Lewiston. She is a regular contributor to the children’s magazine Highlights.
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