Wild in "The Wilderness"

Wild in “The Wilderness”

A wildflower trapped in a crevice, never rises above the throng.

The knight, regaled in armor, never hears the cardinal’s song.

On the misty road, dark and twisted, each curve could be a pitfall.

The black-draped girl on Doomsday’s doorstep, never bathed in a waterfall. 

Moonlight and shadows followed him every day that he longed for her.

He was lost in “The Wilderness” and never heard the night winds whisper 

“She hears your love song but despises your quest for glory.

You, sleeping beneath a weeping willow, is not an allegory.”

In those nights by the sea, in the harbor lights, he stole her heart away.

His duty meant they could never share their dreams of blue and gray.

Their forbidden love sent her home to a place far from the sea.

He had been but a shadow, duty bound, yet longing to be free.

Broken hearted people wear tears on their smiling faces.

Their lessons, perhaps too late for learning, have the basis

” A person’s goodness will always shine through the darkness.”

However, in this bloody war, that light has no sharpness.

She prays, “One wish be granted - life free from slavery’s thorns.

Created all that I am, my color I have borne.

In this evening of the day, this hour of darkened sky

what good is our love if we can’t be eye to eye?”

Lost in the woods of “The Wilderness” he prays, “Lord, let it be

that her kiss belongs to me, now and for eternity.”

Yet, he remembers his plight, “Stand tall, a man can’t crawl.”

A shot is fired. He’s on all fours amid the irony of it all.

“Without you, our happiness becomes merely words.

A gust of warm air if they are not heard.

I would walk all the way from Maine to Virginia 

to touch your face for there is nothing lovelier”.

He sees a pathway through the forest. It leads away from the war.

He leaves the battle scene to follow it, searching for something more.

As he approaches the end of the path he enters into the sunlight.

The path opens and vast flatlands plus a small cottage come into his sight.

In the sunshine he sees the figure of a woman.

His heart begins to beat with joy, for it is her.

He runs toward her, dropping his rifle to the ground.

She sees him and runs into his arms and his wounds.

Three rebel soldiers emerge from the same pathway.

Seeing him and a black woman embracing that way

they shoot and kill them both.

Those who rescue the wounded and bury the dead

are searching through the woodland’s deathbed.

“I got four dead over here,” says a young girl dressed in black.

“One Yank and three Rebs.”

“Right Ma’am,” bellows a large black man working with her

“Let’s get a cart over there and get those four bodies onto the road.

This place reeks of death.”