Today’s Haiku:
Each day is special
Today more special
For being now.
July 4, 2007. It’s been 231 years since the fathers of our country met during hot, sultry days in July and signed the document that brought death and ruin to some but freedom and a glorious future for gnerations to come. They were truly men of courage. I am proud to call myself an American. And I am proud to mention an ancestor who served his country in the Revolutionary War. Allow me to salute him here:
TO ANDREW TRIBBLE
CHAPLAIN, CONTINENTAL ARMYHe was a man of the cloth who carried a gun,
That ancestor of mine, who marched
With the Continentals, prayed with
And for them, wrote their letters
Propped up their courage and prayed
Their souls into the after-life.Tortured by doubts that are the mark
Of human frailty when that which we pray for
Seems forever to elude us, yet, like
The objects of his benedictions,He kept on, Trenton, Morristown,
Brandywine, Germantown, Valley Forge–
How does one inspire the fighting spirit
Of a shivering soldier at that camp of despair,
Who leaves bloody footprints in the snow
And chews the bark of trees to ease his hunger?In those days of fervor, praying for a loaf
Of bread was praying for victory,
A blessing on a newsprint to pad a worn boot
Was a plea for God’s help to smite the enemy.When Cornwallis marched this soldiers out
With guns reversed onto that dusty Yorktown field,
Andrew’s faith , if ever it wavered, surely soared.
I would he could have known, as I know,
The vast portent of that day.
From Blue Flame, Selected Poems by R. Dean Tribble
God bless our country and all its people.