What Part of Don't Ask Don't Tell Don't You Understand

Gettysburg, PA —
           families crowd the run-down visitor’s
                      center — school groups cloud
           dim glass around guns — the tour guide ponders
                      my question confused
           perhaps at the thought of a she-poet
           buried but feet from the fallen soldiers
           perhaps at our interest in her — we
                      do not know the names
                                 of his soldiers — he
                      does not know the work
                                 of nor the name Ms.
                                            Marianne Moore —

so we put aside Ms.
           Moore decide the self-guided auto-tour
                      will cure our boredom
           justify the drive — placards match numbers
                      on the map plastic
           protecting a script I read silently
           you read out loud intent on how photo
           reproductions match, recreate landscape —
                      it was not until
                                 our hike up Big Round
                      Top — tulip trees full
                                 their fallen blossoms
                                            yellow-green, flower

circumscribed with orange —
           that I understood — two black butterflies
                      circled encircled
           each wing each grave — O copse, highwater mark
                      of a divided
           nation — O blue fishhook inside gray, side
           broke against side, the bodies flayed, corpses
           corpses — and now almost a century
                      and a half later
                                 what hangs on those fields —
                      silence — silence — say
                                 the word write silence
                                            until it sounds looks

wrong — silence as deep
           or deeper than the park’s requested peace —
                      it could not can not
           consecrate like the consecration made
                      those July days — no
           cemetery designated private
           or public holds the living’s thoughts at bay —
           take this soldier who weeps a man nursing
                      a man, man’s last words
                                 to another, two
                      men ambiguous
                                 as daguerreotypes
                                            that portray two men

no context or sign
           of relationship, the action at hand —
                      here one man dies while
           his comrade survives — features fade and merge
                      memory fails me
           transforms memorial, idealizes
           the texture of a beard the expression
           exchanged eyes locked on the eyes of the one
                      who dies spark of life
                                 lost no words no words —
                      lost like the failed points
                                 of light as they flexed
                                            across field and ridge

the Cyclorama
           map’s topography a palm’s contours lost
                      like that blood-flecked tooth
           I cradled at age seven crown and roots
                      nestled in my life
           line’s crease — I tasted iron as my tongue
           tip touched socket, shot back like a palm bit
           from a metal nip found beneath the pillow —
                      vigil — keep vigil
                                 bronze soldier vigil
                      over your comrade
                                 dying beneath you —
                                            no retreat — no peace —