Petals Fall Around Monticello’s Garden

By a collapsed house

A pear tree blooming.  Here a

Battle was fought.

                          ~ Shiki

At Gettysburg we walked across the fields.

Not far away from there a pear tree bloomed.

In Arlington Lee’s mansion has no shields

To keep it safe from all the men he doomed

Spread out and buried near, beside his home.

Not far away across the river broods

Colossal Lincoln, and beneath a dome

Among the cherries, man of many moods

Is Jefferson whose love was black in bed.

The ironies were not between the flowers

And death alone.  The white and black instead

Embrace the nation in its petal showers.

  In Thomas’ Sally Hemings we hear all

    We need, though, spoken in two lovers’ drawl.

~ Phillip Whidden