John F. McCullagh Poems

The old man, grey, bespectacled, with difficulty, rose from his chair.
If he’d come to plead for mercy, I doubt he’d find it here.
He struggled to stand steady with his Zimmer walking frame
As he gave his testimony we all felt his sense of shame.
...

The bearded man in the forager’s cap rode in on little sorrel that night.
Lee had called a council of war to game plan for the coming fight.
The Northern aggressors were on the move but they might be vulnerable on their right.
It was a bold audacious plan to divide in the face of the foe.
...

Twelve years; has it been as long as that?
I’m conscious of the grey that streaks my hair.
She, however, seems just as I remember
As the day before that day she wasn’t there.
...

Lillian Caine was the young lady’s name.
She was a romantic at heart.
She was painfully thin with a wart on her chin,
and stood tall at the end of the line.
...

It always starts with a Woman;
a woman with skin like sweet milk chocolate.
A woman with a voice like warm honey on a cold dark night
And brown eyes in which a man might comfortably lose his soul.
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A Pall of Civic Sorrow shrouded Charleston like a mist;
Nine bronze coffins in the church nave waiting to be blessed.
Anger would be natural, doesn’t violence beget more?
Is forgiveness even possible? Many were unsure.
...

I’ll admit that it was different, and something of a strain
When our troupe was performing “Hamlet: for the criminally insane.
It was some do gooder’s notion to expose them to the arts.
and I saw that they accepted it when boys played women’s parts.
...

I remember the flowers you wore in your hair
when you were my bride at nineteen.
Their bright colors kept all the dark clouds at bay
Or at least so it seemed then to me.
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He stared at the words on the paper-
at least a dozen times.
At last he gave a little laugh and said.
“I can’t recall if these are mine.
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My mother was a little girl when the Western Union man
Put the dreaded telegram in my grandmother’s hand.
It said that my grandfather would not be coming home.
It told her that she’d have to raise my mother all alone.
...