Antietam Primer
Depending on which road you find yourself taking,
you might, for example, enter first at the very last,
past the Union dead (and unknowns) at the hilltop
cemetery just off Highway 33 (the Boonsboro Pike):
of course, at this point, you’d already be thinking
in numbers, since everywhere, no matter where, there
are calculations—carved on statues, raised across faces
of memorial plaques—how many on this side died, how
many on that, plus numbers for the injured, the missing,
tallied up as if in some grade school arithmetic problem;
then, if you turn north on Maryland 65, taking a right
on Starke Avenue, you’d pass on your left a lush field
which will turn out to be the famous Miller cornfield
(of the morning phase), where more fighting took place
than anywhere else (battle lines shifting back and forth
all that September day across the broken stalks), or you
might find a nice place to park near the Observation Tower
(you’d later learn it was used to store arms), just a few
steps southeast of what will turn out to be “Bloody Lane,”
a deep ravine—on any other day, a path used by locals,
like the Mumma family, whose farmhouse was burned
to the ground (also in the morning phase) to prevent enemy
sharpshooters from occupying it, although no one counted
on the Mumma’s bees, hives and hives of them driven out
by flames into swarms that pierced the heads of retreating
Confederate soldiers like grapeshot—but on that day in ’62
(for most of the midday phase) opposing regiments fought
’till over 5,000 lay dead, the sunken road filled to brimming
as if it were a mass grave. But even if you never got to see it
all—the Burnside Bridge, where a major skirmish took place
(in the afternoon phase), or the Dunker Church, taken again
and again (and again in the morning phase) by either side
because of its high ground—and even if you only had time
for one turn through the auto tour, you’d want to find a quiet
spot for a picnic, a blanket spread over the grass, somewhere
near the silvering split-rail fence, the only interruption now
in the hollow-hill-hollow-hill landscape, where you’d be able
to feel a breeze, a passing, and the bees, everywhere the bees.
About the Author
Mary Pinard’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, and elsewhere. She teaches at Babson College.
Related Articles
BR Footnote:
Boston Review’s intern blog