The unintended heart is rediscovered
Wandering the warzone long after the final command
But war is in the mind and in the blood
Who are we to determine its beginning or its end
Grass along cemetery road shakes in the wind
The young unbloodened forest surrounds
Like spires above the old battleground
This was the place
They stormed up these hills like wrecking balls
And rolled right back down into valleys of corpses
When they couldn't take the town by force they encircled it
And waited
The unintended heart is caught off guard
And taken back into imagination
Of the last defense of the Mississippi River
A townsful of soldiers and civilians strangled inside
Imagining the fasting of a sacrificed people
Fool's gold cupped in the blood of obstinate command
Standing their ground upon righteousness,
Upon pride, belief, home
They finally surrendered on the fourth of July
The key port wrangled away from a crumbling confederation
And the unintended heart bears witness to what has passed
Long ago in the shadow of those warring kings
The enduring, the indomitable, the cruel
The kings of hunger