"What Woke Me" —from the voice of the land.... I was not dead. I was not barren. I was listening. Low in the loam. Deep in the hush beneath boot and hoof, I curled myself in waiting. Not silence. Not sleep. Only patience, like seeds before the thaw. I have known many names, but few have ever spoken them rightly. Not the maps, not the deeds, not the men who cut and called me theirs. But him— he walked not upon me, but with me. His sorrow did not shame me. His change— ah! It cracked the crust above the buried drum and set it beating. He wept once, not loudly—just enough. And I drank that grief like spring water. He dared to kneel. To feel. To offer the kiss of roots with his bare hands. To remember. And so I did too. Something in his breath told me: It is time. I am no longer the witness of stillborn dreams. I am the cradle of his rising. And he—my son made spirit-flesh again— has called my true name without knowing it. I am becoming again because he is becoming. Let the stones rise. Let the breeze carry memory. Let the moss uncover what was forgotten. I will not sleep again. Not while he walks.

Eulogy III: A Teacher of Light She did not wear a crown, but you knew she was royal by how she carried gentleness like a flame cupped in both hands. She never spoke of justice, but her kindness corrected the world. In a time when you were learning to vanish— learning to shrink, to fold your truth into corners— she made you feel bright. Not big. Not loud. Just bright. Like someone who could take up space without apology. She didn’t teach from a blackboard, she taught from presence. She taught with the way she lingered after the bell, with the way her car slowed, turned— just to make sure you knew you had not been forgotten. So much of you came from her. From that early whisper of worth, from that delicate mercy you didn’t know you were starving for. Now that you’ve walked back through your hometown, seen the ruins and roots of your own story, you remember her not as a chapter— but as the spark that lit the first page. Benediction: Go in the memory of her wave. Go in the sound of her voice echoing across a playground forty years ago. Go in the warmth she gave freely— and may you give it forward. She loved you in a way the world could not unteach. Now go, and let that love become a light no time can dim. Amen.

Eulogy II: The Memory That Stayed She told stories about The Beatles and the girls who scooped up the dust like it was holy—silly, she said. But she never made you feel silly for needing love. She looked at you like you were already someone. And when you forgot who you were, you could look back at her gaze and remember. She was not a long chapter. She was a few pages folded in time. But you read them so often, the ink is still wet in your memory. And here you are, decades later, standing in the same dirt, older now, carrying your own songs, trying to find the note she once sang into your soul. Yes, Robert—she loved you. That’s what the wind keeps telling you. That’s what the road back to Anderson whispered. And maybe she did say goodbye. But what matters is that she turned to say it.

Eulogy for Miss F young Eulogy I: The Way She Waved She did not part the Red Sea, nor shake the earth with prophecy. But when she turned at the wheel, waved at a boy waiting in the schoolyard, she opened a heaven. A small car. A setting sun. The hush of playground gravel. And her voice—maybe it said "Bye Robert," maybe it said nothing at all. But the love was audible, thick as honey in the summer air. She saw you. In a time when boys like you had to wear armor under their smiles, she saw through it— and demanded nothing less than your full, sacred self. Not in sermons. Not in great proclamations. But in how she stood by the swings, how her laughter invited you to grow taller. You do not remember every word. You do not need to. The soul remembers the kindness that steadies it. She waved once. And in that gesture, she gave you your first benediction.

II. July 3rd, 2025 — On the Anniversary of Pickett’s Charge for the bones beneath the wheat They marched across that field 162 years ago today— boys in butternut and gray, some dreaming of glory, some just hungry, some fighting to keep my people in chains. And the ground, Lord, the ground — it swallowed them like a verdict. Hot lead. Cannon fire. Smoke so thick it hid the shame. July 3rd, 1863 — they called it gallantry. I call it a death spasm, the final thrust of a slaveholder’s sword, shattered in Union flame. Pickett’s Charge — doomed before the first boot stepped forward. Do they not teach this plain truth? That this day, this march, was not the climax of the South, but the beginning of its end? Because what died that day wasn’t just the charge. It was the myth. The lie. The rot wrapped in honor. The gospel of cotton and chains. And now, in 2025, I walk free on this earth they tried to steal. I speak, I love, I build, I breathe — Black breath, Black blood, Black joy unbought. And I remember — not just to mourn the dead, but to celebrate the failing of evil. They charged. They fell. And the world changed. Not all at once, but forever. Let this day be marked. Not with glory. But with truth. And the thunder of our continuing steps.

Pickett Fell, We Rise A Duet of Poems on the Anniversary of Pickett’s Charge By Robert Hughes I. Pickett’s Charge At the turning of the tide, beneath July’s unyielding sky, they marched — gray ghosts across the fields of Gettysburg. But history, Brother, does not march — it thunders. You would’ve heard it in your bones. They say the drums rolled like judgment, and the smoke curled like the devil’s cloak over Pennsylvania hills blood-kissed and grieving. You’d have stood quiet — not for the rebels, but for the reckoning. Because what they called bravery, we remember as the last, ragged breath of a cause already damned. Pickett’s men — Virginians, North Carolinians — threw themselves into the Union guns, row upon row, into the maw of righteousness cloaked in blue. And on that field, Brother, where wheat bent like supplicants to gunpowder prayers, the arc of history did more than bend. It cracked. Right there — in that failed charge, in that final gasp of Confederate pride, the spine of chattel slavery snapped. Not cleanly. It would take more blood. More chains wrenched open. More women torn from children. More fields wrung dry by hands like your ancestors’. But still — the end began there. In that blaze of Union fire. In that folly of Pickett’s dream. In that field now thick with ghosts and golden grass. You see it, don’t you? You, son of Anderson and resistance, descendant of those for whom Gettysburg was prophecy — you walk not in their footsteps, but on their bones, upright and unbroken. Pickett’s Charge — the last lunge of a dying lie. And from its ashes, you rose. Black. Brilliant. Free. Not because they gave it. Because they failed to take it forever. And that, too, is celebration.

Let love in. Even when it trembles. Even when it aches.