Battle Cry
By Kay Day
for W. Thomas Smith, Jr.

He thought he heard it first in the oak trees,
within boughs he chose for lookouts,
sturdy perches where he spotted enemy
encroaching fields of peanuts or cotton:
fierce Hessians with scraggly beards and beefy arms,
earnest Yankees in blue,
Braves in feathers and paint,
his enemy shaped in tales he’d heard or read.

He heard it again in the water,
pulling him along the rivulets
where he dodged arrows and musket balls,
a call urging attack, defend.
The sound was the sweetest he’d known
since he was an infant drooling
as his mother crooned. And it stayed
with him through pine cone missiles
and ramshackle forts, battles alongside
barefoot friends, with and against those friends,
depending on sides determined by drawing straws.
He was a boy in the lap of a calling.

He heard the sounds again on the evening news,
an echo in the single word freedom,
and the melody rendered by Decatur’s maxim,
“My country, right or wrong.”
His song grew a march, and soon he knew
the grunt and sweat, real bullets slicing air
above his head. He accepted his mother
might one day greet a box on a tarmac,
flag enfolding him like a favorite blanket.

He thought he’d heard it first in Southern pine,
until he dealt war as a man. Then he knew.
He’d heard his first battle cry
resounding in the lullaby
he heard Mother sing
as he took shape in her womb.

Author-poet Kay Day writes for several national literary magazines. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Carrie Allen McCray Award for Poetry, two Byline Literary Awards, and a Florida Times-Union fiction award. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio.
Day’s Battle Cry was inspired by the work of – and written for – W. Thomas Smith Jr.

© 2005 Kay Day
Reprinted courtesy of Kay Day and W. Thomas Smith Jr.

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