Your life spanned the Twentieth Century
You lived at the center of that terrible epoch
Between the Spanish flu and chemotherapy
The crises political and economic
The vast carnival of death unthinkable in its scope
The charging forward of bewildering technology
You took the wounds shared in the triumph
Buried conflict within yourself within your family
Though conflict will not remain hidden forever
You tried to make yourself a poet in advanced old age
A painter applying color affirming goodness
At last you affirmed your love
You never neglected that
But you never told us how it felt
How it felt to be shot to pieces
To swim upon the ocean
The very waters aflame