Best Muskets Poems
Lord, place Thy Hand on the yoke of those who fly,
And guide them through the vast reaches of the sky.
Bring them safely through their perilous flight,
And may they ever look to Thee as their Guiding Light.
Lord, protect the sailors who sail the treacherous seas.
Calm the roiling waters that they may cruise with ease.
May they always look to Thee as their Pilot for support,
And with Thy guiding hand, bring them safely home to port.
Lord, protect the soldier with Thy mighty sword midst the battle.
Give him strength to press on despite the muskets' rattle.
Hear his fervent supplication for Thy protection from all harm,
And provide him with courage as he leans on Thy eternal arm.
Lord, shield the brave marine as he storms the dangerous strand.
Strengthen him with fortitude and provide Thy protective hand.
Surround him with Thy angels as he strives to overcome the foe.
Bring him safely through the conflict and upon him honor bestow.
Lord, bless and provide comfort to his family, for they also serve.
Until that day they are one again, give them hope and steady nerve.
Hear their prayers O' Lord, for the safe return of heroes dear,
And from their trust, hope and faith in Thee, may they never veer.
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) All Rights Reserved
The other day I sat beneath a sycamore tree on the court house lawn.
Old Glory fluttered in the breeze and to my eyes it was drawn.
It was tattered and frayed, I assumed, by the storms of many seasons,
But as I mused upon its state, could it have been caused by other reasons?
After all, it saw action in the Revolutionary War to create a new nation,
And suffered shot and shell in The War of 1812 ending foreign domination.
It flew over the Alamo and was drenched by the blood of courageous squads,
Who sacrificed their lives for independence, aware that they were against all odds.
Old Glory was unfurled for action in the Civil War in many a furious battle,
Mutilated by cannon fire and time and time again by the muskets rattle.
It was ripped by rifle fire as the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill.
To look upon it at their front must have given the Riders a comforting thrill!
It was torn asunder in the bloody trenches of France in World War One.
Though battered and torn it was held high at the battles cease for laurels won!
As its charred remnants were hoisted over Iwo Jima's blood soaked strand,
It unfurled to the cheers and tears of brave men who took a gallant stand!
Though the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and subsequent Desert Affair,
Took their toll on the old flag, it yet waves majestically with dignity and flair.
Though it has been spit upon and trampled on it still remains unfurled,
As a symbol of hope and a beacon of light for humankind about the world!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
Through closed eyes, I see what has become of your land.
I hear flutes, blessings drifting across a land filled with
highways and stoplights, never silenced.
Through closed eyes, I see children screaming and running,
smoke from soldier's muskets settling upon their fallen bodies.
Through closed eyes, your drums still beat, Warriors still dance,
and strength of your Elders lives on.
Through closed eyes, flutes are heard,
and Spirits
never die.
Minnesota
12/26/12
As they say, “Where there’s smoke, there is fire”
In this case it is certainly true
For a people who once ruled so many
find themselves more in place of the few
For so long they have led with a vengeance
but the tide has now started to turn
The majority finds itself strangely, on the fringe of a party that burns
They arrived from the sea with a mission
Took the land and its natives by force
With their muskets and weapons of killing
t’was a violent beginning, of course
Then they sailed overseas with their weapons
for they needed a country to build
There they found what they sought in another
and the blood of the innocents was spilled
Man-made laws justified the enslavement
as they bartered for precious ‘black gold’
Never needed a currency system as the humans were bought and were sold
Generations of slaves built the country
all their blood soaked the land that we share
As the children were ripped from their mothers
they survived on their will and a prayer
But the winds that bring change were upon them
and the nation was soon torn in two
So they fought to the death with their weapons
From the blood and the ashes we grew
Many more later died seeking justice
slowly gaining new rights never known
To these giants we owe our freedom
and in time we have certainly grown
But in spite of our laws and our freedoms
there are many who hold onto fear
As they honor their ancestors’ visions and the power they once held so dear
All their talk of a government body
who will come and will take guns away
Truth be told it is not what they’re fearing
but a country that’s changing to grey
As the races are coming together
the majority slowly will wane
As descendants of those once in power
feel the strength of minority gain
In their hearts they are mourning the passing
of a time which has long-ago gone
And the power they had over others
now a reckoning is born in the dawn
So they scream out the 2nd Amendment
wrap themselves up in red, white and blue
But their time, like their fathers’ is ending
A majority rises anew.
The Boat
In the harbor there is a galleon you can buy dinner on.
They sing shanty songs and talk to wild mermaids until sunset.
Then all, are quiet,
as we watch the brightness together,
touch the water in the distance…
sizzling, in silence, melting into liquid gold on the sea.
Then, ever so slowly…gone.
The music continues. The laughter grows. This is a good time.
The flag is hoisted, the bells ring, pirates have come aboard.
The gallant crew defend, the intruders are put back.
The skull is tossed into the water… the watery depths they embrace.
The cheers, tell all. The show was grand indeed.
Cutlasses flashing, muskets afire, all the players in their dressed attire.
Home ward we set the sail, a pleasant trip it was…
Adventure, wild on the high seas, for a small price.
Thankfully, only a play, as not to say…
They were not fierce indeed.
All is serene tonight along the banks of Antietam Creek.
'Neath the brooding moon, the battlefield looks so bleak.
Bloodied ground was hallowed on this dire September day.
On the field this night, six thousand slain heroes lay.
Six thousand valiant men stared heavenward with lifeless eyes.
Wounded brothers lay among them, emitting plaintive cries.
All about them was strewn the ravaged debris of battle,
Torn asunder by the cannons' roar and the muskets' rattle.
Strewn upon the field of strife were mementos now forlorn.
Thither and yon, Bibles lay, their pages scorched and torn.
Blowing in the breeze were photographs of those left to grieve.
Unfinished letters wafted about that families will ne'er receive.
Johnny Reb in tattered gray lay nigh Billy Yank in dusty blue.
Their mingled blood flowed as one, the sacred soil to embue.
It can ne'er be said that these men had sacrificed in vain.
Each believed in the cause for which he was cruelly slain.
Alas, other battles would rage 'til the war would cease,
When brotherhood would reign again, bringing blessed peace.
Soldiers lie awaiting Gabriel's clarion call, their duty done.
The sweet sounds of nature returned to replace the roaring gun.
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired (© All Rights Reserved)
In Boston they threw ice and oyster shells
As the British troops marched coldly by.
Till soon the streets were ringing with the yells:
“Lobster-backs!” the righteous raucous cry.
The troops retreated till they could retreat no more,
Nine men against one hundred strong,
Till suddenly the muskets made their roar,
Scattering hot lead amid the throng.
Ant though the Boston public howled in outraged hate
Someone softly spoke the soldiers’ case:
John Adams arguing their very fate
Seeking justice in that hostile place,
A patriot who helped us spurn the British crown,
Rescued six lost British lives,
Against the sentiment of his own town…
One more reason Adams’ name survives.
Climb high these mountains
And meet cliffs of history
Snug against the moon
Cold lover's warm kiss
Caress each syllable of song
Love makes joy exist
Adirondacks mist
The milk of mothering trees
Melted on morning's joy
Tongue lark the dark lakes
Water births of memory
Ego ice thin here
The nation's blood lens
The red moon night, so pride stakes
Claim to fluid truth
The wind prowls the skin
Stirring leaves of memories
A breast dried of peace
Algonquian trail
Footsteps eat the span of trees
Man is small in grief
The muskets torment
Fusion of mission and right
The north shrikes lament
And beg migrants gone
But wax wing they shun the sun
Bunting snow for life.
Old Mohawk glory
Gone when forest bare shivers
In castles of ice
Steel teeth scrape the rocks
And eat iron from the ore
Of greed, killing trees
Logging the green tongue
Of the sun's wealth of heat
For this new kingdom
Of civilized men
Performing barbaric feats
Distant from the den.
Dusk the Gilded Age
Of rage ... like natives, all past
Diseased to the eye
A new dawn breaks song
And howls of joy claim again
The blessings of rain
Sceptered in the throat
Cities' diamonds of dew
Love of warblers note.
Love is eagle's joy
Climbing high against the breast
Peaking in delight.
American Osmosis
Jamestown was the source of this
Movement that swept across the continent
At first the ships were left behind
And people used what they could find
A mule, an ox, a Percheron
Whatever they could sit upon
They loaded up and west they went
Some went north and some went south
They filled the land e're which they went
The Louisiana Purchase was the big event
That sealed America’s destiny
Soon the country was spilling westward
To be the first to make a print
Where no one else ever went
They hoped for happiness as their destiny
The Donners never did find any
There were others rushed by gold
With hopes of riches they would hold
But mostly what the immigrants found
Was this great nation which was bound
To fill her borders sea to sea
With citizens like you and me
We owe thanks to Conestoga and Civil War
Beaver hats and railroad cars
Pulled behind the great iron horse
Of muskets bore and coon skin caps
Horses and cattle and leather chaps
Cowboys, six guns and barbed wire fences
Rangers, Marshals and bar maid glimpses
Pony Express and long coach rides
Wagon loads of buffalo hides
And the Indians who gave their homes
Of mountains and prairies where bison roamed
To live among us brave and bold
Absorbed by the manifest destiny told
Of the American Osmosis
When Sitting Bull and Colonel Custer were locked in mortal battle,
And with arrows flying and heard was the muskets' fearsome rattle,
Finally surrounded and when all hope was lost, Custer was heard to say,
"You must be bull sittin' me!" Proclaiming with his last breath, "Foul play!"
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) All Rights Reserved
[Note: this poem was inspired by a strange and terrible experience I had at 17 when I first set foot on the battlefield in 1965 after an interview at the college there: physiologically, it was like being mortally wounded. I was an agnostic then and so shrugged it off, but after I had an NDE 7 years later, I started thinking it may have been something else.]
Now the happy soldiers
go to fight again the battle,
marching bravely forty abreast
with heavy muskets shouldered,
yelling their cries of pain and glory
as they face the cold cannon
barking like a pack of mad dogs.
Down they go in ones and twos,
and sometimes in little bunches,
collapsing together as though
put to sleep by the fairy dust
of long forgotten dreams.
Both sides feel the urge
to kill, to step the victor
o'er their bothers' bones.
Grown men playing-- yes,
even perhaps a bit silly--
but maybe, just maybe,
some of them are unaware
of their own anguished deaths
there on that sweating day
not really so very long ago.
At seventeen I went to that town
to talk of my education and
in the warm afternoon
I meandered mindlessly
amidst the boulders named
fearfully for Satan's lair.
There, suddenly, terribly,
while walking between two
of the giant stones, my body
shuddered in anguish and sweat,
my heart raced like it might burst,
as fearful dread seized my mind
and rattled me to the very core
of my soul; but back then, I did not
yet know I might have lived before.
['Satan's lair' refers to Devil's Den, near the base of the Little Round Top where some of the battle's fiercest fighting took place.]
Hour ago raised the morning sun
The eastern army outnumbers the hussars fifteen to one
The battle has began
Hussar horses with thousand thundering hooves begun their run
Eastern army cannons and muskets will discharge
As the hussars push forward in awe inspiring charge
Before the muskets and cannons can recharge
The front of the hussar left wing is at large
The lances pierce through musketeers like a storm
The hussar charge starts spread far apart then single column like a spear it will form
Into one group of two different colors two groups previously separated will transform
The hussar charge is deep in the musketeers’ ranks the each commander his king will inform
The sea of lances comes down like avalanche or volcanic rain
The furry of battle is insane
Impaled warriors sometimes six all at once cry in pain
How could things look so bad for musketeers at those odds is hard to explain
It is the horses of hussars that caused musketeer breakdown
The horses that were mixes of Mongolian blood with that of the once bread by the crown
Mesmerizing is the speed with which hussars their enemy have cut down
And despite of larger enemy force it is the musketeers that in the blood would drown
It is those magnificent horses that hussars have bred
It is the speed that enemy would come to dread
Some horses were chestnut almost red
Some were colored like a puzzle white patches yet black head
Some white and some black like the night
Like hybrid horses hybrid number defines sun’s morning light
Normal horizon is destiny of Gods that mage would incite
So with hybrid number as horizons just imagine power of its sun’s light
But that power is mind not the soul
And it is black stallion with visage as deep as the soul
Dark means deep and stallion is black as coal
He represents the deepest essence of free unbound soul
Black Theology
It’s that time again
Black man’ scratch for a dime
Like a savage dog, nose on the ground
A bureaucrat’s squash to sip lime
Peeling skin, bare bleeding phalanges-such is excruciating pain
The word of Adam, let them be bound
In chains so fiercely hot, manacled so close to the furnace
Such that their sweat make it rain, make it raiiin
The cry from below- minus six, the trumpet is yet to be sound
The burst of their blisters shall adorn the walls of the city
And I say 7 times; times indeed your muskets shall be in vain
As a mass of ancestors rise upon you, and proclaim to all corners of the world
“This is the day that the lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it”
Cuz this is the day, in which a black man’s pride was found
Seventy years ago today, brave men stormed the shores of Normandy.
They answered the call to arms to protect and defend our precious liberty.
Some didn't reach the shore - they lay cradled in the sea's cold embrace.
Blood that once stained that hallowed place is now cleansed without a trace.
Waves of courageous men struggled through that brutal, scarlet tide.
America lost precious treasure that day - alas, all too soon they died.
Men were not concerned about liberty or setting the world aright.
They thought only of protecting the comrade to their left and right.
On they charged against the foe who lobbed storms of shot and shell.
"Press on! Press on!" was their battle cry marching into hell!
The cries of maimed and wounded was heard above the din of battle.
Fearless chaplains and medics tended them midst the muskets' rattle.
What might these heroes have become had fate not dealt them so?
A teacher, a farmer, a doctor or minister? Alas, we shall never know.
They left farm, shop, school and hearth to cross the billowing sea,
Forfeiting life and limb on the Altar of Honor that others might live free!
Upon the plain above Omaha Beach lie ten thousand souls we mourn,
Who await Gabriel's clarion bugle call to rise on that triumphant morn!
Old Glory yet proudly waves due to the sacrifices these brave men made.
May the memory of their devotion to duty and bravery never, ever fade.
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) 2014 All Rights Reserved
The brave young soldier had served his tour in the dreadful battle,
Midst the deafening roar of cannon and the muskets' constant rattle!
He'd spent months in the trenches in the cold, the mud and gore,
And had seen his valiant brothers fall and learned the futility of war.
He'd finished his tour of duty and was heading home to take his rest.
Comrades escorted him to the plane saying, "Buddy, you did your very best!"
Alas, he had fallen and was placed aboard a C-130 known as the "Angel Flight".
In a casket he lay in the dimmed cargo space as they sped on through the night.
He had fought heroically with members of his platoon at his side.
He had taken the solemn oath to serve his country with unabashed pride.
Sadly, he would not hear 'welcome home' by his kin with great elation,
Nor be embraced with longing arms or hear the praise of a grateful nation.
No! He heard angelic choirs and God's tender welcome to his eternal home,
As he took his final bourne on high through that vast celestial dome.
God said, "Welcome home, Soldier! May I present you with this crown!
You have served Me and My people with honor and great renown!"
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved