I Weep for Our Blessed Continental Soldiers- This is a very personal piece.

I lay awake in bed, tormented by the scream of the dead and dying
Soldiers who fought two hundred years ago.
Silly girl, such tears have no place so late and far from their inspiration!
So sang the embittered psalmist, as I recall.

I can still hear the bullets at Lexington. Isn't that odd?
That I can still here the random shot,
That I can see the smoke and blood and feel my legs
Running from the regulars,
Seeing them spill down the blood-soaked soil of Breed's Hill,
Someone's hand crunches beneath my feet,
"Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes!"
Have you ever fired a musket before?
I half-know the motions from reading about it and seeing it done.

One shot is loud.
A broadside is louder, and the volume can be tuned out,
But not the blood, the crushed skulls underfoot,
The constant waves of men that tumble and knock down their
Comrades who are marching up the hill.

Then New York and Fort Washington.
May God bless the souls of those
Unfortunates who were bayoneted to trees by the Hessians.
May God bless all of our brave soldiers who died that day.

I suffer with them when they call smallpox and dysentery
And the flu and colds and measles and venereal disease,
And it is terrible at Valley Forge, where I am stuck inside a hut
In a winter that sucks the warm breath out of my lungs
Like an icy vacuum.