The bagpipe played a hymn, "Amazing grace".
Brave and sad the bass and tenor drones
Laid root and fifth as the foundation stones,
The chanter building melodies in space.
Next at the funeral a verse was read:
"Seek first God's kingdom.  All the rest will come
In God's own time."  And I, long after some,
Have found that kingdom in the words he said:
"There is no place like home."  A father's word;
A commonplace some think too often told.
But those words now are ones that I will hold
Among the sweetest phrases I have heard.
My uncle died on New Year's Day this year,
A decade's dawn.  That day became the start
Of love's assault on my long hardened heart,
First glimpse of that sweet sadness without tear,
That love which floods the heavy soul with light,
That bittersweet, that complicated theme
Of faceted and chiaroscuro gleam,
Of aching hurt, and prayers in the night.
                                                       (July 1991)

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