I meant to post this poem from the Writer’s Almanac yesterday, but I ended up camping out in a backyard to test the sleeping bag I bought and you know how camping out in backyards can get away from you. (For the record, my sleeping bag is really warm.)
I hope we all had a good holiday and didn’t set any more fires. Here’s the poem: 
At Gettysburg

These fields can never be
simply themselves. Their green
seems such a tender green,
their contours so significant
to the tourists who stare

towards the far range of mountains
as if they are listening
to the page of history tearing
or to what they know themselves of warfare
between brothers. In this scenery

cows and cannons stand side by side
and motionless, as if they had grown here.
The cannons on their simple wheels
resemble farm carts, children
climb them. Thus function disappears almost entirely

into form, and what is left under
the impartial blue of the sky is a landscape
where dandelions lie in the tall grass
like so many spent cartridges, turning
at last to the smoke

of puffballs; where the only red
visible comes at sunset;
where the earth has grown so lovely
it seems to forgive us even as we are learning
to forgive ourselves.