Wright's Tavern, Morning
The British were coming.
As dawn's cold fingers
clawed the eastern sky,
men scurried to their stations,
all too aware of the rhythmic crump
of that ugly distant drumming.
The Threat was inching closer,
a scarlet thing with many spikes
shimmering in the first sun.
The Monster's great insistent heart
was felt in dreadful pulsing
through Concord's very earth.
On skeins of breeze
shrill snatches of the British pipes
came sighing like the ghosts
of those about to die.
It would begin soon.
The village men all mustered here
before their tavern,
whose weathered boards
they knew by heart.
The Thing that was now looming,
The Standing Army,
must not prevail.
Blood banging in their ears,
here beneath the sign of Wright,
the blacksmith and the baker knew
this was the day of days.
The hour had come
to stand and fight.
The danger from the east
would soon be here.
If life was to be sweet beyond today,
if this young promising land
was ever to grow straight and strong,
if America meant hope at all,
if force majeure was wrong,
then by this very afternoon
the Monster must be stopped.
At Emerson's command
the village fifes and drums struck up,
the skirmishers went out.
Today at Concord, men would die.
America's mettle would be tried.
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