People can’t change
my father always insisted.
Fundamentally, he said,
without a shred of doubt,
people cannot change themselves.

Fifty years later
as he was dying
his born-angry baby
standing quietly by his deathbed
listening
with no apparent anger
made him think

Fuck, he thought,
looks like I may have been
wrong about that
I wish I hadn’t been so
goddamned categorical
about it all my life.  

Then he died.