February: Year-day 43

                                        
                                           
February: Year-day 43

Tall and ascetic, with a screechy voice,
striding out of Illinois--who'd hate, spare:
he chose his wife as if he had no choice;
he chooses words with empathetic flair.

Once by a soldier with a fatal wound
he sat, and wrote to his mother for him,
and talked, and listened, and, gently attuned,
stayed for his comfort at his young life's brim.

So, now, in that house back in Illinois,
he remains for our comfort to the brims
of our lives, knowing pain and knowing joy,
and our Bicentennial moans and hymns;
now, through those words/ he/ was blessed to deploy
to bless our troubled zeitgeist/ oddly swims.

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