War Piece

by Ron Padgett

The handwriting of a very old man
wiggly like the hairs on his head
and the even more wiggly ones
in his memory of the eyebrows of his grandfather
who did something we can barely imagine —
he fought in the Civil War
and had his first shave outside a tent in Georgia
two years before a man with a gray beard
leaned over his field hospital bed and kissed him on the lips
and then signed the letter “Your loving son”
in as graceful a script as he could with tears in his eyes.