Private Read walked like a drunk man,
though stone cold sober in the middle of the day.
He wobbled, reeling like gravity
was playing a nasty trick on him.
Like it did that first time when a shell fell,
like an apple onto Newton's cranium,
and buried poor Private Read under rubble and body parts.
He lived and spent his recovery feeding chickens,
learning not to wobble. Learning to trust
the natural physics of the earth once again.
