It was a field before it was a battlefield
—for Luke
It was a green before a fiddler stood on it,
and made mirth, and never stopped playing.
It was grass. Or maybe a greenwood. Maybe
underbrush, thick at your knees. Unparsable.
We have each taken something that belonged
to itself first, something that was once a wide
and open green. What turns red in spring
before it greens? The redbud trees along
the highway. Also the human heart. Each
glows lamp-like on the road to church.
Virginia rolls with fields and when I say:
it was a field before it was a battlefield,
you say: “And after.” Yes, and after.
by Hannah Vanderhart
from The Ecotheo Review