Remember me

A Poem

Father Time departed this ancient earth,
So forgotten, as the centuries, ashamed, take wing.
Like waning heroes in the after-war
Like blind doves we give ear as our sorrow sings.

There is no place left for love in this bygone land.
Soot and ash settle where eagles once stood sentinel.
At the tarnished, silver gates mourn the widowers.
Among the charred, broken ashes of the homes lie their cries.

They had had no warning even as the sentinel was shot down.
As the raiders on horseback swept through with deadly grace.
They chortled at us rebel scum as we fled in vain,
And suddenly surrounded, we could not flee in time.

(If you are reading this, I have died. I beg for you to remember me, my brethren, and all those who died for the sake of liberty. If you read this message and ignore it, may Providence forgive you for your sin of forgetting those who died for your sake. Oh, and by the way, I was a Continental soldier. 2nd Massachusetts Regiment.

I wonder if people in the future who read this will understand why we remember at all. It seems like we only try to remember important matters, and what we don't deem as important might as well never have occurred because it will be forgotten. To forget is to deny, remember that, whoever you are who found my haversack. I buried it under the root of the tree near the meetinghouse because it has a necklace for my girl in it, and as the British were destroying our houses after Lexington, I did not want them to steal the necklace. I hope that Susanna is alive and well. If our child is alive, I apologize for his or her unfortunate fate of being born out of wedlock. However, if he or she should read this, then he or she should know that religion neither sanctifies nor permit their birth; Providence does. I believe in God, not the rules of the Puritan church, and this nation would do damned well to realize that the former is made of far greater stock, no offense to Puritanism. I practice it anyway.

I don't have much time before we march to the encampment around Boston.

So God bless you, whoever you are. I beg of you again to please remember us.)

- Jonathan Eleazar of the Woburn militia
April 19th, 1775, Massachusetts