Zouave Ghost at Antietam Creek, 2010

Across the wispy creek with vast fingers of mist all grasping

and braiding the twisted boughs whose leafless remorse

looks moonward to expose a stare at pitted metal rasping

and blankly downward on a slowly moving reflective course,

where perfect steel reports echo and pierce again a perfect day,

the muscles that no longer ache shimmer beneath the tatters

of once buttoned epaulets over an open jacket's scarlet fray

in moving mist both blue and grey where flesh has ceased to matter.

With no lost home warmth longing in winter snow to pretend to

it wanders adrift in memory's aching realm along the lonely banks

with no needs from its drained and scattered flesh to attend to

searching in vain in the moonlit mist for its blasted missing ranks.

If it turned to grin the beige chill would freeze your core:

those hollow eyes that once saw yellow now see no more.