Poem: "Soldier's Heart"
Aug. 2nd, 2023 05:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis is today's freebie. It was inspired by prompts from rix_scaedu, see_also_friend, and mama_kestrel. It also fills the "high pain tolerance" square in my 8-1-23 card for the New Adventures Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.
"Soldier's Heart"
[1866]
The War Between the States
left lives and families shattered.
The North had lost many good men,
and the South had lost so many
that it struggled to function at all.
Numerous women were left widows,
children were left orphans, and
girls had few marriage prospects.
The men who survived the war
were often broken in body and
spirit by the wounds that they had
sustained in combat or otherwise.
Many of them could no longer work,
left with missing limbs or weak chests.
Soldier's heart was a common affliction,
its skittering pulse and shortened breath
turning once healthy men into invalids
ashamed of their faltering health.
Others had learned a little too well
how to ignore their body's complaints,
so they could no longer tell if they had
been burned or cut or otherwise injured.
One fellow went hours with a broken arm
before noticing that it no longer worked right.
Everything was in turmoil. Some Southerners
wanted to move north where it was less damaged,
while some Northerners went to take advantage
of the ravaged land and economy to the south.
Some industrious women decided to try
solving the problems simply by putting
the pieces together in a new configuration.
There were not enough men, they reasoned,
so the women could share what men they
had and that would be better than nothing.
The wounded men needed help doing
many things, but they could still contribute
to a household in some other ways.
In Boston, line marriage was legal.
So the young maidens got together
with older widows who had lost
their husbands, brothers, and sons.
They gathered up veterans who
had lost their health in some way.
In this new relationship, there were
enough women to care for the men,
and enough men to do their duty
for the women who wanted children.
The oldest of the wives became
the memory keepers of the line,
telling stories to the children so
they would know where the family
had come from and what it meant.
It wasn't always easy, but they
found that in time, they could
hold each other hard enough for
their broken pieces to stick together.
* * *
Notes:
"Soldier's heart" is an old term for PTSD from the Civil War era.
The War Between the States is one name for the Civil War.
Extreme casualties caused problems in both the North and the South, although the South was hit much harder. Women found it harder to get married, and even the surviving men weren't always fully functional.
Per "The Pursuit of Happiness," line marriage first became legal in Terramagne-Boston, Massachusetts.
rix_scaedu, see_also_friend, and mama_kestrel. It also fills the "high pain tolerance" square in my 8-1-23 card for the New Adventures Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics."Soldier's Heart"
[1866]
The War Between the States
left lives and families shattered.
The North had lost many good men,
and the South had lost so many
that it struggled to function at all.
Numerous women were left widows,
children were left orphans, and
girls had few marriage prospects.
The men who survived the war
were often broken in body and
spirit by the wounds that they had
sustained in combat or otherwise.
Many of them could no longer work,
left with missing limbs or weak chests.
Soldier's heart was a common affliction,
its skittering pulse and shortened breath
turning once healthy men into invalids
ashamed of their faltering health.
Others had learned a little too well
how to ignore their body's complaints,
so they could no longer tell if they had
been burned or cut or otherwise injured.
One fellow went hours with a broken arm
before noticing that it no longer worked right.
Everything was in turmoil. Some Southerners
wanted to move north where it was less damaged,
while some Northerners went to take advantage
of the ravaged land and economy to the south.
Some industrious women decided to try
solving the problems simply by putting
the pieces together in a new configuration.
There were not enough men, they reasoned,
so the women could share what men they
had and that would be better than nothing.
The wounded men needed help doing
many things, but they could still contribute
to a household in some other ways.
In Boston, line marriage was legal.
So the young maidens got together
with older widows who had lost
their husbands, brothers, and sons.
They gathered up veterans who
had lost their health in some way.
In this new relationship, there were
enough women to care for the men,
and enough men to do their duty
for the women who wanted children.
The oldest of the wives became
the memory keepers of the line,
telling stories to the children so
they would know where the family
had come from and what it meant.
It wasn't always easy, but they
found that in time, they could
hold each other hard enough for
their broken pieces to stick together.
* * *
Notes:
"Soldier's heart" is an old term for PTSD from the Civil War era.
The War Between the States is one name for the Civil War.
Extreme casualties caused problems in both the North and the South, although the South was hit much harder. Women found it harder to get married, and even the surviving men weren't always fully functional.
Per "The Pursuit of Happiness," line marriage first became legal in Terramagne-Boston, Massachusetts.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-04 05:57 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-04 09:42 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-05 04:16 am (UTC)Hm, I wonder if soldier-ghosts might have gone elsewhere due to different death rituals or beliefs, i.e. the warrior ghosts staying on their home ground to defend their people, but some of the soldier-ghosts attaching to graves or something.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-05 04:34 am (UTC)Neither would I, but some people are really into that. Stone Fist pounced on the chance to become Channing's spirit guide, just so he could scream at the guy.
>> Hm, I wonder if soldier-ghosts might have gone elsewhere due to different death rituals or beliefs, i.e. the warrior ghosts staying on their home ground to defend their people, but some of the soldier-ghosts attaching to graves or something.<<
Any of them are free to partake of whatever options they have prearranged, are offered then or later, or can access by whatever means. But if you kill hundreds of people on a field, you tend to get a wide range of responses -- it's quite common for enough to stick around, or leave strong enough imprints, to create a "field of ghosts" effect, even if most of them actually moved on.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-05 05:34 am (UTC)Fair enough. I still think you might get different proportions, depending on personality, faith, home ground, etc. If, say 2x as many of the local ghosts decided to stick around because they are local, that would skew the sample.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-05 05:56 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2023-08-05 12:54 pm (UTC)