The Huts at Esquimax

for Dave Smith

Our clothes are still wet from wading

The Chickamunga last evening.

There is heavy frost. We have

Walked on the dead all night.

Now in the firelight

We are exchanging shells and grapeshot.

I can still hear our loud huzzah

When late in the day

The enemy fell into full retreat

Along the pine ridge to the east. . .

We chased them until we were weary.

Each night this week

There’s been something

To keep me from sleep. Just an hour ago

I saw

A dead sharpshooter sitting

Against a rock with a scallop

Of biscuit still lodged in his mouth.

He wore one silk sock.

Snedikerhas returned from Chattanooga

With five thousand convalescents

For the left wing of their musketry.

We have roasted a deer

With a molasses sauce and pepper.

Magrill and zandt have returned

From horse hunting with a sack of sugar.

By morning we will have buried our dead

And fed the prisoners: Joe Cotton

Will hang all seven of them in one tree

When he sees they’re done

Licking their fingers. . .

I shot a Rebel yesterday

In high water just for cursing me.

Just six months ago

For that alone it would have meant

Three days in stockade.

We can see now that cannonading

Has set the hillside on fire.

The wounded Grays

Will be burned

Beyond their Christian names. . .

Joe Cotton says he’d ask God

For rain, but he’s got no tent

And river water

Has chilled him straight through

To the very quick of his being.

Copyright Credit: Norman Dubie, “The Huts at Esquimaux” from The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001). www.coppercanyonpress.org

Source: The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems 1967-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001)