Offspring

Here’s a fun one for parents and children of all ages.  How many parents hope their children achieve what they did not?  Live more openly, more honestly?  Never blast off without thinking into the courthouse and in the homes of neighbors.  

I read a quote recently about love.  That is to say, real love is about letting go, at least with children.  Accepting them as they are.  They didn’t ask to come on board.  Most don’t know how they will check out.  And in between, they have to deal with credit card companies, sly banks, insurance companies that do not pay.  Shysters whose pockets are filled with lint and candy wrappers.

Both we and our charges ought, as best we can, follow our bliss.   

And here’s a poem from mother who has enormous hope.  Let us free our charges of that awesome, powerful state, freedom.

Genes  by Sharon Dunn

My eleven year son wants to fish,
he owns two rods, one saltwater,
one freshwater. He loves knives,
Bowie knives, Swiss Army
knives, "Knives like this one?"
my brother says, opening his desk
drawer and taking out a small
jackknife with antler handle.
My boy camps outdoors, begs to sleep
outside, is always shooting
arrows, rubber band guns,
he is lashing together a fort
in the backyard. He sails,
swims, kayaks and wants
to know the stars.
The outdoor hunting genes
are in the dark men in my family.
Yet I believe he is a son of light.
His joy in reading, cooking
and piano are fanned
from the tinderbox
of his father's heart.
He will save rainforest,
he will grow vegetables,
keep horses, fly his own plane.
He will make his own brave life,
he will not remake our lives
nor redeem us, nor pity us.

Philip Levine -- What Work Is

The following is a link to a page with both and audio and text version of a poem. 

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/what_work_is.php

 It is written and spoken by Philip Levine former Poet Laureate.  He is among my favorite poets, and early on in my reading career, at least poetry, I read a poem he had written about his experiences in Detroit when it was a thriving, if not cruel, industrial city.

His poems voice is direct.  No cleverness.  And if there is irony, it isn't frivolous or merely clever.  His poems matter and acknowledge injustice.  "Most of the time," he writes, "a lot of people have to suck it up.  And many who think they are sucking it up have no idea how much worse others suffer." 

I like this poem for its search for fundamental truths.  I like it for its lack of distractions.  I like it for acknowledging the maliciousness and indifference that is part of most people's everyday existence.  And I like it for, in the end, his turning of what we think of as "work." 

Follow the link for both print version and an audio version that he, himself, read.'