Duryea Zouave

she misses her ghosts
when the light is dim, like tonight:
with the inevitable glow of streetlamps
filtered in the fog;
nights when she finds herself lonely
and one-jacket warm;

nights, she imagines,
that resemble those long hours
between battles
july 3rd to 5th
or 2nd to 4th—
she never remembers

but she knows of Pickett’s Charge
of Devil’s Den
she’s looked on a triangular field,
nearly seen the soldiers she knew were once there.

she’s walked on Little Round Top,
pictured Chamberlain’s men
lined up, guns bared, barrels empty
and bayonets affixed;
thought of the fear that
you must have been able to smell;
infantrymen wear wool
even in those summer months.

it is on these nights
she searches the mist
for a figure walking towards her
someone regal, with a glass eye,
to recount battle scars, fatal wounds;

but the mist is always empty,
and her ghosts, they never come.