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Sandy Longhorn

Self-Guided Walk in a Park Built on Bloodied Ground, 9 Stations

~Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park

 

1

 

Replica Civil War split-rail fences

         line the drive, demark the trailhead,

some 21st century sweat gone into authentication.

 

2

 

A mile loop of smooth asphalt runs

         along the ridge, swoops down to river basin

and returns to shaded hilltop.

 

Dozens of residents make use of the trail,

         leading leashed dogs and sweating

through workout gear.

 

3

 

Monument.

 

Confederate Major General Hindman.

Union Generals Blunt and Herron.

 

Three portraits caught in cast iron and silver patina

eyes facing away from the bloodied arena.

 

4

 

Herron’s troops engaged first.

The 19th Iowan and the 20th Wisconsin

 

routed by Hindman’s men in the slaughter pen

of the Borden family’s apple orchard.

 

Attack met with counter-attack.

Blunt’s might joined Herron and the pattern

 

replayed until depleted resources

forced Hindman’s retreat in the night.

 

5

 

Locals tended the wounded, bound the dead,

regardless of regimental colors, watched 4 houses

 

burn and an untallied number of captured Confederate

horses massacred on Union command.

 

6

 

60 years later, Caledonia Ann Borden,

9 at the time of the battle, maintained,

Well, we lived over it but I don’t have any love for a Yankee.

 

7

 

Passing the parking lot, a truck with gleaming

Confederate flag bumper stickers.

Gun rack empty.

 

8

 

Up on the ridge, a white oak so tall, so large around,

the rangers suspect it a witness tree.

 

9

 

Down near the spring a black walnut

and a hackberry merge, giants twined, mated.

 

The easy image of two sides healed,

made whole, but like the wind

through branches, the vision does not hold.

Song of Loblolly & Warblers

~White Oak Lake State Park

Alone on the trail, I’m surrounded

by towering trees and the loud calls

of pine warblers. In the gaps

 

there is silence and sunlight

and so much room to think.

 

Sometimes when I visit these parks

I am lonely. My therapist stresses

I change my syntax. Avoid

 

I am in favor of I feel

because feelings are fleeting.

 

The call of the pine warblers each to each

is fleeting but on repeat. I listen

alone as the wind through loblollies

 

lays down a soft beat. Later

when the ranger offers a map

 

to the little grand canyon,

I drive on a gravel road, alone,

into more warbling pines

 

to find a man in a truck.

I park and wait, want to ask

 

if I’ve found the right place,

but I am a woman alone. I feint

with my phone. Breathe easy again

 

when he leaves. I enter water-

carved sand and stone. Stopped

 

in my tracks by the marvel,

I sit to spend time in my head alone

listening to birds, trees, and the silent unknown.

Longhorn.jpeg

 

 

Sandy Longhorn is the author of three books of poetry: The Alchemy of My Mortal Form, The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, and Blood Almanac. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, Oxford American, and elsewhere. Longhorn teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Central Arkansas.

Bear Review

11.1

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