Shining golden sun with
perfect blue sky and
crisply white clouds

green green battlefield with
old-white gravestones and
yet the red red blood still soaks
through the grass, dirt, and stones of
Gettysburg.

Climbing up Little Round Top and
looking down on Devil’s Den as
great generals,
lowly soldiers,
and fifers
had done in
July of 1863.

Running Picket’s Charge as confederate
dead had walked, picked up,
and double-timed to the beating of
hearts and shrills of
whistles and waving of flags
before me.

Here and there

men had fallen down,

boys had lost too much,

women had nursed them,

girls had mourned their passing.

But just over there,
on Cemetery Ridge,
one damn yankee
saved a johnny reb
because they were united by
masonic ideals that went beyond
the last day of battle at Gettysburg.

Ideals that cosmically bind of:


patriotism,


justice,


humanity,


hope and


love
that we all would have
fit into our lives
each and every day.

If poetry is how our souls
would have us speak;

then ideals are how our hearts
would have us act.