The grass is wet,
dawn rinsing the sky pale as linen.
Brick walls rise carefully,
as if the fort does not wish
to disturb the water.
Cannons point outward,
patient as old arguments.
Their mouths are quiet now,
filled with birdsong
and the soft click of a jogger’s watch.
I stand where someone once stood
watching smoke tear the night apart,
wondering if survival
could be spelled with a flag.
The flag today is enormous,
almost theatrical:
red louder than memory,
white refusing to stay clean,
stars stitched into permanence.
From here, the harbor looks peaceful,
deceptively small.
Ships pass with no idea
what they are floating over.
A ranger’s voice drifts on the wind:
dates, distances;
but what stays is the sound
of waves against stone,
the same sound, perhaps,
that told Francis Scott Key
to keep watching.
History does not shout here.
It waits.
It lets the morning speak,
lets visitors walk its edges
and decide
what survives in them.
David Anson Lee is a poet, philosopher, and physician from Texas with work published in Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, The Scarred Tree, and other literary journals. He explores place, memory, and human experience through lyrical and meditative poetry that engages both the mind and the senses.