Gettysburg Postscript Poem by Sandra Osborne

A red badge of courage
Or a red badge of death,
Mangled, strangled, missing limbs
Balls and powder mingling skin.
The haunting horror of it all.

Reynolds death and Ewels shame
The wheat field, Devils Den, the hills
To the north, Cemetery and Kulps.
Little Round Top’s barely hidden
Buckets of blood.
The fields weeping insanely with anguish.
And then Picket’s charge with cannons,
And muskets, smoking and firing,
Firing, firing, firing.
And thousands, and thousands and thousands
Of gray and blue boys dead.
And more who were mangled and strangled,
And went missing limbs.

And as horrible as the horror there,
The fishhook would not be the last assaulted.
There would be the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor,
The bloody angel, and Petersburg’s’ crater.
It would be the Death Angel’s own harvest.
And it would be bloody,
It would be war.