2018 Fathers Day Challenge

Rapunzel

Because his son asked him to,
he came to read at story hour.

The letters on the page were worms
he struggled with to get out of his mouth

which is why he liked the geometry
of asphalt shingles and roofing nails

he who stuttered Rumpelstiltskin,
lodged somewhere in his brain,

but Benjie liked the golden tresses
and the golden hour he came.

I can't help but notice that the poems posted started off with ones about great Dads before some dared to express that some Dads aren't aways what they should be.

UnderYourSpell said:

I can't help but notice that the poems posted started off with ones about great Dads before some dared to express that some Dads aren't aways what they should be.

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I wonder if the revers would ever be true, in a mothers day theead?

todski28 said:

I wonder if the revers would ever be true, in a mothers day theead?

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Everything is grist for the mill imho. There were things I wouldn't write about when my parents lived because it might hurt them if they read it. But I am lucky: I had two loving parents. Crazy? Yes loads lol, but supportive and caring.

But we all have our tragedies. I may not be writing the heartbreaker about my parents, but there's plenty else if I want to go digging through my past.

I wrote a poem for a Mother's Day thread years back. The poem is about my grandmother falling out of a restaurant booth at a little family Mom's Day celebration. She was ok or my poem would not have the rather silly tone I tried to give it. But when she fell, our waiter ran to help her up (she was not a small person) and exclaimed "Oh Grandma fall down on Mother's Day!" And my dad and I got the giggles (we helped her up too!) because it was equally embarrassing and hilarious. But that wasn't very nice of me, writing about that.

todski28 said:

I wonder if the revers would ever be true, in a mothers day theead?

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I'm afraid a Mother's day (Mothering Sunday here, although the American name has snuck in far too rapidly!) poem would be even more scathing and I'd make no apology for it.

GuiltyPleasure said:

I have a letter
you wrote at sea
the year of my birth.
You know I'm here
but worlds away.

You never got to hold me,
drowning in the turmoil
of war, the oily swell.

"What was he like?"
Persistent
curiosity of a child.

They try,
using memories and
photos but you were
never real, just black
and white smiles,
yet here you are
in this faded ink
thinking about holding me.

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I hope you've got this saved somewhere and it won't just fade away in a lost thread. It's beautiful and poignant. Draws me back to read it again and again

UnderYourSpell said:

I hope you've got this saved somewhere and it won't just fade away in a lost thread. It's beautiful and poignant. Draws me back to read it again and again

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Thanks Annie. It's an odd thing to be emotional about someone you never knew as in this case but it's also eerie reading something written about you years, and lives, ago.

UnderYourSpell said:

I hope you've got this saved somewhere and it won't just fade away in a lost thread. It's beautiful and poignant. Draws me back to read it again and again

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GuiltyPleasure said:

Thanks Annie. It's an odd thing to be emotional about someone you never knew as in this case but it's also eerie reading something written about you years, and lives, ago.

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I agree. An acquaintance of mine never knew her father who was a captain on a B-52 drowned at sea in the English Channel during WWII.