February 4th
We sit side by side
Zooming through the slippery air,
Strangers—friends for now.
I never knew his name as we sat together side-by-side, smiling, laughing and telling stories. I’ll probably never see him again. What does a chance encounter like the one that occurs thousands of times a day above 30,000 feet mean?
February 5th
Battlefields now cold
Sunshine brightens lonely graves.
Was anything won?
I walked on the battlefield at Averasboro, NC today. It is where the second to the last battle of the civil war took place. In the sunny fields and woods I imagined desperate soldiers fighting, wounding; doctors struggling to save, severing limbs too injured to save; boys just barley big enough to shoulder muskets full of hunger, fear and pride. How did men in this in-between place decide for whom they would fight? Brothers, sometimes on opposite sides, wondering if it was their actual brother they had just felled. But aren’t we all brothers? For what would I kill?
dmdubay 