To Washington Crossing the Delaware
poem by James Armstrong
Dear General, "Never stand up in a boat" is good advice I learned at scout camp, Especially true in December, in the dark, in a river knocking with ice. History paints with a mythic eye. Your priapic sword and flapping cape, Your Napoleonic waistcoat, your destiny-fastened gaze—Leutze imagined these on the far-away Rhine. German art students stood in for patriots, shivering, hatless, some with out gloves or shoes, some armed with fowling pieces and frontier muskets, eager to assert their independence by obeying a leader. Leutze added moon-gleam to your military pigtail. Dear General, you did a good deed by not becoming our emperor. We won't mention your China teacups, your slaves.
—from Empire by James Armstrong, Up On Big Rock Poetry Series, a Shipwreckt Books imprint, April 2023
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