How to Tell a Father

He asked me to hear him sing.

Confusion lined his face,

"They keep telling me

Shh and hush me down."

I played a note, he sang.

How to tell a father

That he could no longer hear

The music that sustained him

Through all the pain-filled years

And in the days of joy?

The choir was his home,

A loft in a little church

Free for an hour from care

And the burdens that he bore.

A first deafness perhaps

Or something of the ear,

What sadness in his eyes

As his world fell apart.

How to tell a father . . .