GOING HOME
Hanging heavy and damp, a foggy mist covers the acre of land separating my back porch from the meandering creek at the bottom of the shallow valley. Blurred trees, draped in gray haze loom darkly as a backdrop for the creek.
The misty shroud covers the dried bushes, vines and corn stalks of this years wasted garden turning it into a gray wonderland. The morning is peaceful and beautiful in an eerie way. Birds awaken and warm up their throats for a musical day.
I sit on my back porch enjoying a fresh cup of coffee and a morning at home instead of having to rush to work.
Expectancy fills me, but why? The hazy sun light and soft, lightly stirring air is not quite right, but I can not identify what is different. Excited in a quiet, wondering way, I feel like I am becoming a part of the translucent mist. Light and feathery the wetness invades my skin. Air, sucked deep into my lungs feels good.
Contentedly, I sit staring at my now exhausted wonderland garden when a movement at the north end catches my eye, barely. I squint and look closely to see what the shadow movement had been. Though astounded at what I see, I feel no fear. My world fades as I enter the world of yesteryear.
Soldiers walk through my has-been garden, Civil War soldiers, the Blue and the Gray. The spaces between the past summer’s vegetable rows widen to form a dirt road big enough for a wagon, horses or a buggy, but the men I see are walking.
Faintly outlined, both Rebel and Yankee military walk weary and jaded through the soft ground cloud of fog.
I see them. Their heads are bowed and their bodies sag from the private Hells each endured through the years of horrible war.
Toward the north, Blue Coats, limp while the, Men in Gray, stagger south.
Guilt, sadness and pain keep their eyes cast downward. Neither side looks at the other, They keep walking. Sometimes in a steady flow, sometimes in a group. The Blues walk, but more often I see a lonely straggler more tired than the last one, heading steadily southward. With faded clothing torn and tattered and no shoes on his feet he moves slowly on, the Old South heavy on his shoulders.
Both sides hold their guns, if they have one, lightly, the same as when they marched grand and proud to join the war. Marching, shooting and glory now evade their minds replaced by memories of a home place and beloved familiar faces filled with love.
The Gray head to places that have been and are no more, to houses burned, family members killed and land gone fallow. What are they thinking on their long slow journey?
The men in Blue, victorious in battle, head toward what they remember knowing their homes are probably unchanged. But they are changed. Never again will they be the innocent, carefree youths barely past childhood, who left home to win the war. Their fallow ground lies in their hearts from the atrocities they saw and did.
Neither side personal winners; they pass each other silently on their journey to the rest of their lives through the foggy, misty morning in my dead garden.
The sun creeps from behind the clouds and evaporates the fog and mist. The need for preparation for next years planting is all that is visible in the place that was so different just minutes before.
But I know I saw my Soldiers. Twice since I have sat on my back porch on foggy, misty mornings and felt their presence. I have not seen them again but I know they are still going home.
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