The Bone Ring
The summer when I saw the Trylon and Perisphere,
I sat on the farm porch with my Great-Uncle Luther
who told me that when he was nine he watched
the soldier boys walking back home from Virginia.
The new war started, and always another war.
He showed me family keepsakes from the attic—
a top hat his father wore, a bugle, and remnants
that emptied the pockets of a cousin killed at Shiloh:
a button, a spoon, and a ring carved out of bone.
Donald Hall was a U.S. poet laureate and the winner of two Guggenheim fellowships, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, among other honors. He was the author of more than 50 books.