A Poem for his Father
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#80 A Poem for his Father
He’d grown quite tired by then, but still he tried
To appease or even please that ghost whose voice
Pursued him, critical of every move—
Pursued him easily, relentlessly;
A spectral helicopter hovering high
Above him, searchlight showering him in white,
As, trapped inside its shifting spot, he ran,
The voice reverberating in his ears.
But worse, it knew exactly what to say
To sink his heart and overthrow his mind
With crippling catalogues of ridicule.
And so he wrote…in hopes of being healed…and,
Stirred by family stories of one other,
Who threw this hammer—this one—at the mother.
He learned one more detail about that other:
He’d died too early but not soon enough,
And now lies silent in an unmarked grave—
Because the voice refused him any stone.
And so he wrote, and so the voice kept on;
Its arbitrary taunting would not yield,
And written words stacked high could not abate
This feeling that he’d never quite succeed.
He tried to have an understanding ear,
To listen for the mind behind the voice;
To call a truce; to show some sympathy;
To cry for one who gave what he received.
But Sympathy refused these mourning clothes,
And smiling, firmly forced the coffin closed.
“Do not be afraid of showing your affection. Be warm and tender, thoughtful and affectionate. Men are more helped by sympathy, than by service; love is more than money, and a kind word will give more pleasure than a present.” John Lubbock
“Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.” Katharine Hepburn
“Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down
there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.”
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poets are encouraged to send their work - free death short sympathy poem,
Christian quotation on mother sympathy poetry, pet, grief or any other one
that you can think of.