Memoir Poetry
Our Father
A Prayer to all Fathers
I wrote this to my father on Father’s Day. In the process of writing it I was trying to isolate the masculine element of nurture. Please don't get me wrong. The definition of this is not so different from that of motherhood.
However to this author the difference in my mind is Dad was the protector. As a small child I looked to him as so powerful and strong. I still remember standing next to him at his workbench and giving him one of my animals from my toy Noah’s Arc (a little plastic gorilla figurine) and telling him, “This is you.”
I’m not sure if he knew what I was saying from my 7 year old mind. But ironically, it was precisely what I am saying to him now in this poem…
Our Father
To what do we turn
when we are weary
and hope seems to spurn;
when visions get bleary
in life’s great concern
We look to… our fathers
and the ones before
evoke even farther
progenitors of yore
we search for the harbor
that they held us, afore
And there will come a time
when we all must stand…
alone on the shore
and add, his loving strand
to the many before
and pray we can, expand
to their heart’s, implore
© 2024 Robert Trakofler
I chose this photograph after I wrote this poem. Usually I do the reverse but in a bit of luck it dawned on me that it reflects a lot of what I was saying… The photograph is from my recent experience in watching the total solar eclipse. It was taken at the exact and very rare time that we can experience dusk and dawn at the same time.
The poem reflects on the dusks of the many fathers that came before us and the “new strands” we make as we become the authors of our own conveyance. We become fathers in the dawning of our fatherhoods and the hope that we might take what was given and make it better, or at least hold true to what was laid before us. This holds true very much I think in the process of writing poetry.
As I found after writing this (which so often occurs to me in my writing process), the hidden message for me was we take all authored before us. We as writers hear the whisper at the end of all writes that says… “Take this, grow from it, and then take it further!” This in my opinion is the essence of language and writing.
A picture, a poem, and a spoken word are nothing without a witness and for yours, I am always grateful.
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D. Denise Dianaty, Editor and Graphic Designer for the WE PAW Bloggers E-Zine. Administrator for the writers forum “WE PAW Bloggers” group on Facebook, owner/editor for the publication of the same name here on Medium. In addition to being a self-published author and poet, artist, art-photographer, and administrator of the group, Denise is a graphic designer with 25+ years experience, predominately in print media.
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