It is a mismatch staring out from the mirror.
The military crispness of the cap, the profusion of the hair beneath.
Only a few years, and hat and head are strangers to each other.
They touch but cannot meet. Neither would understand.

There was an image about that cap that once meant pride:
A feeling, even now, hard to quell.
It was a sense of cleanness, and of right:
Duty, Honor, Country, sacrifice.

That was before the War
before the killing of the children and their mothers' rape
before the useless deaths
before corrupted allies took their gold, and fled.

The cap looked good when hair was short:
And once no heed was paid to heads
cropped short for appearance' sake.
That too suggested order, cleanness, and commitment.

No one noticed when the short haired admen,
freely cutting off their hair,
freely cut their sense of values too

That was years ago, before the War came close
before the decadence of Saigon surfaced in the lies of Watergate
Before the creeping cancer distant miles away
metastasized at home.

Worlds of hope and betrayal
meet in the mirror.
Time has brought changes.
The cap is still the same.