August 6: Father's Love, Sharon Olds, "Looking at Them Asleep"

When I can get away from my normal life, concentrate on being a husband and father fully, I sometimes feel my heart bursting open like a tulip bulb in spring.  Love sort of overtakes me when I don't have the distractions of work and bills and teaching.  When it's just me and my family.

I know I walk a fine line of sentimentality when I write about my love for my wife and kids.  "Love" is a word that should be used sparingly, along with the words "sorrow" and "weep."  Anything that smacks too much of Jane Eyre and Heathcliff and moors should be avoided as much as possible by serious writers.

However, I am going to allow myself to be a little sentimental tonight.  I am happy, in this hotel room, my wife reading a novel in bed, my daughter and son passed out in various corners of the suite.  I know what love is tonight.

Sharon Olds is not afraid to write about love, either.

And Saint Marty loves the following poem.

Looking at Them Asleep

by:  Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but
slightly pouted like one who hasn't had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
the eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs, up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his fine fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie.  I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content--and I know if I wake her she'll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he'll jerk and say Don't and sit
up and stare about him in blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two.  When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.

Sing with me:  "All you need is..."