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As of April of this year, I: As of April of this year, I have been reading Poetry for half a century (the first two years, compulsory; the rest, gladly voluntarily), but very few Poets have actually shaken my soul.  Many impress my mind, but only the chosen few reach my soul.  This poem puts you among that chosen few.  This poem is, and is going to continue to be, one of the greatest poems ever posted at PostPoems.  Your poem will minister to people you may never meet, and of whom you may never know, but on the great Day of Reckoning, you will see the great gppd that it will have done by that time.  I am often an unpleasant old coot, a little too stubborn, and a little too smug, but I can recognize great Poetry when I read it.  During my undergrad years, I was privileged to study the greatness of Poets long gone---Eliot, Stevens, and the greatest iof them all, Vergil.  This prepared me (although I did not foresee it then) for PostPoems, where I have seen the magnificent greatness of living Poets---like Patriciajj, and now, yourself.  Although I am probably in the final "go around" of my life, due to my medical problems, I thank God (and let me say it again, I thank GOD) for the privilege of being alive today to read this poem.  A casual reader may think this comment may be just a string of superlatives; but a casual reader will not fully appreciate your Poem, which demands the best that the reader can bring to it.  They told me, and they still tell me, that Vergil's great poetic gift was to describe the pathos of life and how to deal with it---his line, Sunt lacrimae rerum---reminds us that there are tears for things, and that we should accept that and deal with it, as Aeneas dealt with the horrible destruction of Troy.  Your poem enters, and enters successfully, that realm that Vergil charted so well two thousand years ago, and I applaud you for it, and I thank you for sharing with us this poem, this magnificent and towering literary achievement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your apology I hold dear to my heart Starward: I'm not offended by your commenets on my poems, I see you and respect your thoughts on my work!

Thank you for the reply, and: Thank you for the reply, and yes, I did mean my comment as a compliment. I took one look at the Wake and never opened it again.  When I was an undergrad, we were all expected to read and get all dithery over Ulysses, but I only enjoyed two chapters of it (one of them being Molly's long soliloquy).  Even with liking those, I can only take Joyce in small doses, very small doses.

Pardon my jumping in, but you: Pardon my jumping in, but you make a fair point about the founders. They are sometimes turned into gods, which they were absolutely nothing near. Quite a few of them pushed for a revolution to avoid having to pay compiled debts to banks in England (large loan debts, not specifically taxes), Samuel Adams took great pleasure in leadings the tarring and feathering of his business opponents when ever he could use their loyalist ties to turn a crowd against them and Thomas Jefferson stopped talking about ending slavery after he realized - in a letter to Washington - that "breeding" his own slaves would make slavery far more profitable (which he then even proceeded to directly "donate" his own sperm to achieving).   Washington, meanwhile, participated in quite a few fraudulent land schemes in New York State (so did Hamilton) - using his surveyor license to doctor land titles and sell the same piece of land to multiple people (who sometimes had gun battles to the death while he counted cash safely in the distance, speaking of guns). That's not even close to the worst thing Washington did, of course. His massacre of indigenous people in what is now Michigan while in the British Military essentially was the powder keg for the "French and Indian" War.  Of course, there were plenty of slave owners, elitists who didn't believe most people should vote, and monetary manipulators (purposely issuing worthless money) among the group. In short, the constitution and each of it's amendments needs to stand on their own merits, not on the shoulders of men who weren't quite the giants many would like to believe. At their best, they were very intelligent men. But they were, more than not, extremely flawed to say the least.   Beyond that, I don't wish to offer any other specific thoughts on guns at this current hour. But I wanted to nod to your sentiments about the founders not being infallable. 

So many break-up poems just: So many break-up poems just skim the surface, but you, with poetic sleight of hand, knew that evocative simplicity and details were the way to make it real and pierce the heart. Your resounding question carries the loss even farther and deeper. Striking work. 

The amateur historian: The amateur historian (ancient history) in me---admittedly a rank amateur---suggests that your poem is the verbal equivalent of the Gordian Knot.