David Welch Poet Rhyme

Knowing the History, Part I

I stroll through the small resort town
at the southern end of Lake George,
William Henry rises above,
the famous colonial fort.

From the French & Indian days,
the original stood right here,
it didn’t last half a decade,
this one has stood seventy years.

Makes me wonder which of the forts
we’d call the ‘real’ William Henry,
the one that’s stood the text of time?
Or the one lost to history?

Not far off is the Bloody Pond,
where they say the water ran read
during the Battle of Lake George,
when ambush left so many dead.

It seems to be just a marsh now,
the cattails waving in the wind,
my mind digs up a ghoulish thought,
did all the bodies fill it in?

Nearby is the town’s paved bike path,
once the old colonial road,
where troops and supplies once flowed through,
now joggers and kids come and go.

Across the way imported sand
arcs around in a massive beach,
do they know bateaux landed there
delivering guns for the siege?

That some of their hulls still remain
rotting in the lake-bottom muck?
I’m sure some like the past like me,
but I can’t imagine it’s much.

The girls in tight bikinis
don’t think of the hell that once reigned
on the spot where they drink up sun,
and excited young children play.

The shops where they buy souvenirs,
once trenches zig-zagging the earth,
dug under fire by Frenchmen
trying to get guns to the works.

The central road where they drove in,
where the massacre did go down…
Do we drive over a mass grave
every time we come into town?

It’s not only these grim events
I see when I’m walking about,
a grand hotel once stood right here,
the old kind that really stood out.

Built in the nineteenth century,
lavish Victorian style,
broad porches looking on the lake
where folks could relax a while.

Now a modern hotel stands there,
lifeless square block, concrete and steel,
the first one destroyed the fire,
the kind of loss a town still feels…

CONCLUDES IN PART II.

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