dancing, they rise

sharon doubiago

Alone, alone, so alone I drive the coast
to the bands and dance.
I dance alone, so alone, the unknown ancestors
rise.

The boys don’t dance.  Or I’m too old
though carded at the door.  Women
who stay beautiful, a friend assured me, are still waiting
to be seen.  By 
the boys?  My mother’s
great grandfather and great great uncles, the Confederate dead,
Moses, Christopher, Daniel, Alexander and John
the five sons of Mary Ann 

eye me from the dark corners
prancing around.  Stompers, behind the banisters,
they suck their beers, puff cigars
beneath their handlebars.  Straight backed
in their black suits, starched ruffled white shirts
and string ties they would if they could.  Is it disapproval
or just death?  The defeat on their faces
eyeing me would stop the Union Army.  Finally
stops me

Now outside in my mother’s Valentine bed
in my parking space of a quarter century
I sleep with thirty years of notes and records.
Moses enlisted May 25, 1861.  21, six foot seven and a half inches tall
with stark blue eyes, dark hair.
Christopher, Daniel and Alexander
all three severely wounded at Gettysburg
taken prisoner, July 1, 1863.

I’m hauling them down to the continent’s edge—
Moses wounded at Cold Harbor, taken prisoner May 12, 1864
at Spotsylvania, Virginia, transported to Elmira New York
died of pneumonia September 14, 1864.  His grave number is 250—
throwing them in the ocean.  Nothing is lost, Mary Ann.  Nothing
can be

especially the teenager John walking home from Appomattox,
dried corn and a few raw peanuts to eat,
his forty year opium habit for his wounds, his
Soldier’s Heart I drive
and dance and dream within
and out of