‘Nelson and George’: A Poem by David Filpula

Nelson and George

’Twas Providence granting old Nelson to George,
Like how he survived at the Valley of Forge.
Young George was a horseman who knew well the breeds
And shone like a knight when he rode atop steeds.

With Nelson’s physique and undauntable style,
The horse was the brawn beneath Washington’s guile.
When his hoofbeats persisted in thunderous tapping,
The cloak and cravat around George began flapping.

While crossing the rivers in wintertime palls,
The horses all rode on a flatboat that hauls
Artillery, first, through a superstorm’s worst,
In the sleet, through the rain, atop ice, as though cursed

To submerge ere traversing the slushy cascades.
In a Durham boat, Washington plotted the raids
Near men on the oars, not a hop from the shores,
While Nelson aspired to conceptualize wars.

In the fog of the freeze, frosty Nelson recalled
That his master first schemed, and thereafter he brawled.
Old Nelson revered his astonishing boss,
Though George might retreat and could stomach a loss.

Just play the long game and then win in due course.
To Nell, upright George was a wunderkind horse!
Battalions of redcoats were captured and jailed.
The brainiac George and brash Nell hadn’t failed.

When Washington’s cunning at Yorktown arrived,
The battle was won in a siege, he contrived.
’Twas Nelson in front, overseeing the blitz,
And facing dejection when Brits called it quits.

To Nelson, the bedlam embodied the brio
Of a dare, on a sprint, in a leap, the whole trio!
Victorious George had old Nell on his farm,
Just to graze in the grass, without reins, far from harm.

But when Nelson met George by the watering deck,
Each embrace with old Nell was a wreath round his neck.
Near Washington’s tomb and its columns of stone,
Old Nelson’s interred at a gravesite unknown.

Dr. David Filpula served as a research director in the biotechnology industry for three decades. He is the author of three poetry collections and three allegorical novels.