From the other side of the dad fence.
Don’t look at me like that
Like a dog who shrinks away
Terrified at the broken bond
Too timid now to leave if the leash lets loose
Don’t look at me like that
I am trying, but my heart is dammed
against an onslaught of unnamable emotions
If I let one in the whole thing bursts, and son
Son
I never learned to swim
I don’t know how to be a father
Where have all our words brought us?
I don’t know how to love the way that birds love when they push their children from nests
and their children fly
I don’t know how to pull the best from you without
turning you into the worst of me
I am afraid you have absorbed the worst of me already
I am afraid
When I first heard you cry I started crying too
Then I was laughing – or both were the same
It all rushed in at once and carried reason away
The river never ceded
Everything is still afloat
Or submerged
Or both in turn
I don’t know how to be a son
I am afraid that we all fail
Know that all I want for you is
to look into the mirror and not feel shame