Kennesaw Mountain

I went there.

I saw winding roads

and ridge backed hills

the locals call mountains.

The ground was all red clay

and the creeks and rivers churned

like bloodstreams of coffee and cream.

It rained a constant drum roll of rain.

There were minnie balls and artillery canister

bored into the wood of the trees

and once there were fields 

littered with bloody butternut

and splintered Illinois bones.

The land is a battery

holding the charge of marching boots

and railroad currents of human electricity.

There was human bondage 

and internecine defiance 

terminally opposed at dead angles.

It rained a constant drum roll of rain

that sprouted Easter threads of Jonquil

in the scrimshaws of the eroded earthworks.

I saw the will to union 

blossom at the bottom 

of shallow scratches in the earth

meandering in lines,

receding from the Snake Creek Gap

past Kennesaw and Peachtree, 

south to Atlanta.