His elder sons flew in the night before, 
while he watched Jeopardy in blue pajamas, 
propped up in bed, where he could ignore 
uncertain answers to domestic dramas. 

Next day, birthday morn, well before noon, 
he sent them off to lunch, with his blessings.  
They sang And Many Mores, maybe guessing 
he wanted solitude, there near the end of June. 	

Before their first martini, he was gone.  
Slumped against the pillow, spirit fled, 
eyes focused through the screen that faced the bed 
and on into the great unknown beyond. 
 
At the service, fulsome civic praise 
amassed in radiant light, rattling around 
white walls, the stained-glass glaze 
that spread the paeans' echoey sound. 
 
Our well-dressed voices sang "Amazing Grace," 
there in that alien, familiar place.  
It was a gift I savored unexpectedly, 
among the baffling clues to destiny.

That hymn— such a surprise, it made me stop, 
as if someone had spied my sulky heart 
and tossed its grieving spirit a kindly sop— 
fed my honest pain, not the public part. 

I had no way to stanch the wretched woe, 
though some comfort availed. Below each tear,  
long enough to assuage its gulf of fear,
I felt a lifelong bitterness let go.