You were loved, Walt

by Thomas Lindley, 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry, when you gave him a large apple and told him you'd roast it for him in the morning

when you helped carry the wounded off the boat and thanked them for coming all the way from Charlottesville

on a hot Washington summer when you walked the unpaved streets carrying an umbrella and a fan to protect your suit from dust clouds raised by passing troops and wagons

singing old songs around campfires, eating green corn out of tin pans, trusting the drunken soldiers to light your way home by pistol fire

when you straightened bits of broken boards, pieces of barrel staves that represented dead officers' graves

by the men you calmed by saying that life is like the weather, you have to take what comes

when you wrote each bed number in a notebook and every bed number had a name, a face and a home address.