Do you remember when we went
to Vicksburg? I barely do;

it was during a photography phase,
I saw only light and contrast.

The negatives are somewhere,
solo cannons, graceful oaks,

field and sky the exact same
value of gray when rendered

in black and white. But these
are Union men, I remember

that much, were Union men,
and a few Confederates

they buried by mistake,
and left, resigned

to the politics of dirt.
The grass forgets first,

which at first seems unkind,
but it’s only foresight—

we erase, and are erased.
We go and forget,

or worse, forget the ones
that went, and can’t—