Independence And Reconciliation Celebration Poem by Alla Bozarth

Independence And Reconciliation Celebration



It began with heartbreaking remembrance,
the acrid smell of canon fire still in the air
after half a century, the exhausted climb
up Cemetery Hill still felt in their muscles—

They had returned, veterans from both sides,
North and South, to re-enact their movements
on the last of those bloody three days
of the Battle of Gettysburg.

In the final Southern charge of the war~
12,500 Confederate soldiers led by
General George Pickett went straight up
that hill and into the line of fire by Union
troops waiting behind a stone wall.

Pickett lost half his men.
Of the 160,000 Americans
on both sides,51,000 or more
died in those three days
of the Battle of Gettysburg
in our Civil War.

On July 3,1913, the 50th anniversary of Pickett's Charge,
50,000 surviving veterans traveled to the same place
in Pennsylvania,
the youngest among them at 61 and the eldest purported to be 112.

The commemoration ended
with Confederate veterans
walking the path they'd taken
up Cemetery Hill to the stone wall
where Union veterans were waiting
to shake their hands and embrace them.

In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt
met with nearly 2,000 still living veterans
for the battle's 75th anniversary.
Their average age was 94.

The President dedicated
the Eternal Light Peace Memorial
to commemorate that most truly civil reunion
and reconciliation embrace of 1913.

Today its flame can be seen
from a distance of twenty miles.

On the front of the memorial
are words carved in stone~
'Peace Eternal in a Nation United.'

Though we are in another fractious election year,
through all our fears and differences,
may it be so.

May civility rule with compassion and reason
in creating new paths to peace.

On the hundredth anniversary next year,
may the way ahead be brighter.
May we keep holy the day.

Diamonds in a Stony Field~
copyright 2012.

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Alla Bozarth

Alla Bozarth

Portland, Oregon
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