Perhaps the poem below will resonate with some of you. It’s not in any collection. First, the story: I met Paul Wunsch in a writing class taught by Chris Rogers at Rice University over two decades ago. Paul had been in Special Forces and served a combat tour just east of the Cambodian border near the demarcation line between III and IV Corp. Paul owned a custom motorcycle shop in the Houston Heights, listened to opera while he worked on bikes, and read Shakespeare. He also had an attitude. Before Christmas one year, he wanted me to take a photo for a Christmas card he planned to send out. The setting was in the back of his pickup truck lodged in a copse of trees on the bank of the major bayou that runs through the city of Houston. To complete the setting, Paul wore a Santa Claus cap while perched behind a live M60 machine gun he had borrowed from a friend with a federal firearms license. So, Paul and I, with no FFL between us, with the M60, were in a vulnerable position. Fortunately, no one saw us or reported us, and, fortunately, he didn’t send out the Christmas card.

Paul, who had smoked filterless Camel cigarettes for years, was dying from throat cancer. Toward the end, he had a tracheotomy and needed to place a finger over the trac opening to speak. Most days he rode a motorcycle to his shop. One day I walked into his office and showed him this photograph of cattails (one of many versions edited in Photoshop) depicted in the poem below. He took one look, placed his finger over the hole in his throat, and said, Old Soldiers. It took me five minutes to write the poem.

Old Soldiers ©

standing precariously at attention

on weathered, withering frames

old soldiers

surrendering to the wind

their silvery hair mirroring

the day’s waning incandescence

old soldiers

grieving their frailty

their wisdom tossed aside

as the lessons of war

old soldiers …

going to seed …