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SHH
These were the places where I spoke in a whisper
(if I spoke at all),
where history's hush pressed down with
the weight of an entire elephant herd,
where Time itself threw me against the wall
to pat me down and see what I had hidden
on me or in me,
where the absolute gravity of whole centuries left
me breathless and mute,
where my imagination began to
simmer as the blinding
light streamed through
the convex windows
of my eyeballs.
Stunned into silence. Humbled. Transported.
Transfigured. Abducted and held for ransom.
The price demanded was reverence.
February 13, 2018
James Chaney gravesite. Meridian, Miss.
Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma. Ala.
Courthouse, Philadelphia, Miss.
Sunken Road, Fredericksburg, Va.
Fort Sumter, Charleston, S.C.
Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Ford's Theater & Petersen House, D.C.
Walden Pond, Concord, Mass.
Gettysburg Cemetery, Gettysburg, Penn.
Lincoln burial site, Springfield, Ill.
Thoreau's bedroom, Concord, Mass.
Waiting Field, Concord, Mass.
Shaker Village, Canterbury N.H.
Killing Fields, Cambodia
Angkor Watt, Cambodia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Mass.
Mesa Verde, Colo.
Council House, Onondaga Nation, Syracuse, N.Y.
Appomattox Court House, Va.
Mother Jones Burial Site, Ill.
Ludlow Massacre site, Colo.
Custer Battlefield, S.D.
Boot Mill, Lowell, Mass.
Killorglin & town cemetery, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague, Czech Republic
Lincoln Memorial, D.C.
Utah & Omaha Beaches &
D-Day Cemetery, Normandy, France