Words with My Father
They were our toys
We assembled them
Like the palette of a sunrise
Blooming bulbs of understanding
As I reached higher
Dug into the darkness
Guided by your patience
Until the words painted all the dreams
You held in trust
And when I could read
You told me to look on my own
Dive into the answers
And let the voices of history
Teach me the way through
The many paths at my door
While your words
The first sweeping glow of my dawn
Held me steady
And when we were apart
Fighting wars
In different worlds
Staring at different skies
The tint of dreams darkened
And the skies burst with anger
Sad clouds sucked us into maelstroms
Hope was held in starshine
Remote, cold and as small as
We felt when we walked by the sea
We stood together, watching
The hurricane that our lives had become
We danced in the dark rain
We stomped in the puddles of tears
We embraced the lightning and
Sang to the stars
And when we came apart
I wandered
I looked for you in every sky
In every garden, waiting for irises
In every ocean, roiled by erosion
In every moonrise, ringed by misery
In every father, reading to his child
On the train
In the doctor’s waiting room
In the park
I could hear the thunder
Your words strewn into me
The seeds planted
Darkness waiting for daybreak
Waves tickling my baffled soles
Sinewy paths in the sand
Light reaching across quiet nights
Turning the storm into my plaything again
Exhorting me to dream with you
Letters, words, books, barricades
And bridges across time
Your voice stays with me
In the words I embrace
Like shining pebbles along my journey
In the lighthouse
Promising safety
In the letters I write
Placed with joy and sorrow
On the stone carved with words
We did not want to write.
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I want you to click on the published link, of course. :) But in case you hate the way the layout got changed because of the ads they insist on sticking in the middle of a poem (argh), this is the way the stanzas should look - I think it reads a little better when you can see it laid out right.