Just Before the Battle, Mother - Scott Ruescher

 In the Civil War song that she stands by her upright piano singing
In our streetcorner living room, in preparation for a solo recital
Of standards, hymns, and parlor songs later this afternoon
At the Orchard Park senior home, for residents in the activities room,
I hear her keep repeating the opening phrase in her light lyric soprano,
Just before the battle, mother, with subtle changes of pitch and tone,
Just before the—Just before the—Just before the battle, mother,
Until she gets it right and moves along to the next lines.
 
I am thinking most of you, she continues, assuming the personae
Of a soldier in gray or blue, While upon the field we’re watching,
With the enemy in view. Touching with her tongue in her cheek
The sappy sentimental notes of that very maudlin number
With nineteenth century aplomb, she understates the you/view rhyme,
Keying on that upright piano the notes that her accompanist,
The elegant octogenarian Bonnie or the mad Russian Tanya,
At the grand piano will play to follow along. Then she clears her throat,
Takes the pencil from behind her left ear, and writes a note
 
In the margin of the sheet music, in a left-handed cursive
Made illegible by a tremor that might enhance the vibrato in her voice.
From the perspective of a soldier who would die for the enslaved,
Or for the right to enslave, whether he actually believed
In what he did for duty or not, she wanders from her music stand
In white jeans, sandals, and teal top, then walks across the carpet
And back to the piano again, brushing back her auburn hair
And letting the light from the window polish her buff complexion.
 
Daughter of an eccentric Protestant father and a modest Jewish
Mother from the Bronx, she was raised as a pacifist Quaker
In southwestern New Hampshire, not far from Boston, that hub
Of both radical 19th century abolitionism and angry 20th century
Racial segregation. And so she practices a mournful song
Of war among the contradictions, knowing there wouldn’t have been 
A Civil War to begin with, or demagogues bent on scapegoating
Blacks for the votes of gullible whites, if white supremacist
Europeans hadn’t abused their power over Africans.
 
She corrects herself once again, polishing the song, giving
A smoother spin to one or two of the syllables each time, clearing
Her throat again and trying the first verse once more. She sings it
In its entirety now, to be sure she’s got it right, pairing “you” and “view”
Perfectly to their notes, then moving along to the next lines, too--
Comrades brave are ‘round me lying,/Filled with thoughts of home and God,/
For well they know that on the morrow,/Some will sleep beneath the sod--
While I listen from the kitchen stove, stirring the chickpea stew.

Scott Ruescher's 2017 collection, "Waiting for the Light to Change," is available from Prolific Press, and his next one, "Above the Fold," is forthcoming in February 2025 from Finishing Line Press. He has new poems in recent issues of Common Ground Review, Naugatuck River Review, Nine Mile, Pangyrus, Poets Against Racism and Hate, and the online magazine of the Colby Museum of Art. Retired from administering an arts-education program at Harvard and from teaching English in state prisons for Boston University, he helps teach ESOL classes and writes promotional material for an affordable-housing nonprofit in the majority-immigrant neighborhoods of Boston.