The Battle of NashvillE
by Elizabeth Dingmann Schneider
The path beneath our feet is slick mud
following a heavy afternoon rain,
and I imagine this soil wet with blood.
When men and boys fought to hold this city
a century and a half ago,
surely some of their lifeblood soaked in deep,
the traces a permanent stain on this hill,
one more battleground in a war fought over
the fundamental nature of humanity--
whether or not it is acceptable
to own another human being.
In the North, our schoolbook Civil War lessons
are often intangible.
We don’t walk its battlegrounds,
we haven’t dug them up to pour our foundations.
At our friend’s house, less than a mile from this hill,
metal detectorists have found a handful of bullets,
can identify which weapons they came from,
which side of the war,
whether they were ever fired
or simply dropped where they lay.
Are we so sure there will never again be battles
in the streets of our cities, on their hilltops?
We’re taught to believe that one hundred fifty years
is impossibly long ago.
But this isn’t ancient history--
it’s as fresh as the mud beneath my boots.
following a heavy afternoon rain,
and I imagine this soil wet with blood.
When men and boys fought to hold this city
a century and a half ago,
surely some of their lifeblood soaked in deep,
the traces a permanent stain on this hill,
one more battleground in a war fought over
the fundamental nature of humanity--
whether or not it is acceptable
to own another human being.
In the North, our schoolbook Civil War lessons
are often intangible.
We don’t walk its battlegrounds,
we haven’t dug them up to pour our foundations.
At our friend’s house, less than a mile from this hill,
metal detectorists have found a handful of bullets,
can identify which weapons they came from,
which side of the war,
whether they were ever fired
or simply dropped where they lay.
Are we so sure there will never again be battles
in the streets of our cities, on their hilltops?
We’re taught to believe that one hundred fifty years
is impossibly long ago.
But this isn’t ancient history--
it’s as fresh as the mud beneath my boots.
Elizabeth Dingmann Schneider lives and writes in Minneapolis. Her collection Blood is available from Red Bird Chapbooks, where she formerly served as a poetry editor. Elizabeth’s work has also been published in Third Wednesday, Sleet, the What Light Poetry Contest, Atlanta Review, Naugatuck River Review, Mosaic, Streetlight Magazine, Motherscope Magazine, and Coal Hill Review.