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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2004 : Edward Wright Haile
GAINES'S MILL
At the Hurrah for Georgia
I up and ran over the Field of Battle
towards a great rattling curtain of vines
upon which flashed the uncatchable
fruit of the Enemy
Pits and clumps of grass
shot pain to my knees
and I knew my shins were snapping
I reached up for to grab bars of air
with my shredded hands
so as to run with no knees
and how surprised I was to see
then my shirt and pants still clinging to me
but no leg in it
I thought moving
clinging without a leg
a Gun floating beside me keeping up
no hand upon it
one of the Colonel's new enfields
poking holes in the noise
through which I saw my breath going like frost
and then Come out of there
and leap over here
said the space behind the space where I was heading
Do not run but leap over
to these hills tan with sun
over to the Tan Hills
just before the sun toppled like a shell
And there was a Door
framed with huge black stones
and the Regiment were dusk silhouettes to the left and right
cause I could see a campfire crisp burning beyond it
and I thought Nossir
you just
won a Battle but don't
you go through that door
And I thought a friend had slapped me on the back
but it was just my stuff
my flesh and blood ketchin up with me
This poem was a finalist in the 2004 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Edward Wright Haile
I am a full-time poet and writer, with two volumes of poems: Open Not Glass and Here On A Mission; a work of translation: The Oresteia of Aeschylus; and a work of nonfiction: Jamestown Narratives. I live in Champlain, Virginia, where I have spent most of my life. Foreign languages (German, Portuguese, Ancient Greek, Chinese) taught me the love of the word and its precious family of meaning, but lately, I have so fallen in love with English that I neglect all else.
Works ready for publication include: Renapewak (poetic drama, likely to be brought out by the Rappahannock Indian Tribe); Quotations from Myself (just that); You and I (345 love sonnets after discovering around #30 or 40 that the form was not dead or even dated); WIP: Where None Before Hath Stood (poem dealing with Newport's ascent of the James River in May 1607); plus one or two more volumes of poems.
I used to be a musician (flutist), then a rural land surveyor. Nowadays I just do this. Very happy marriage and a son next door who follows me in surveying.
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