Widowed, four children to raise alone,
your mother in a wheelchair, you didn’t need
a kid like me, a smarty pants, a selfish drone,
who mocked your politics, questioned Christ and creed,
took a bottle of rum for a joyride
and totaled the family car, got caught
smoking dope—who’d shut his bedroom door and plot
to flee from all you struggled to provide.
Alone, no partner to huddle with, none,
you weathered out my stupidity,
waited til I called, and loved me, loved me.
Before you died, in your last card, tenderly
you wrote, You are exactly the son
we always wanted. I was sixty-one.