May 13: Reflective Tonight, Letting Go, "Things My Daughter Knows"

Feeling quite reflective tonight over the events of this weekend.  Prom for my daughter.  Mother's Day.  All the changes coming this month.  I know that it's my job to raise my children to the best of my ability.  Try to teach them good morals, common sense, independence.  Then, I have to let them go.

I hope I've been a good father for my daughter.  She is the best poem I've ever written.

If you can't tell, Saint Marty is having a little trouble with the letting go part. 

Things My Daughter Knows

by:  Martin Achatz

How to lace ribbons up her shins,
count music beats, lift herself
to her toes, hold her body
on that axis, those ten digits,
defy laws of gravity, motion,
float like some undiscovered planet.

How to brush her red hair
upside down, rake teeth
from scalp downward,
over and over, until her mane
glows like organized flame
when she tosses her head back,
when she looks at me
from the forest fire of her face.

How to ignore the gaze of boys
as she splits water with the curves
of her hips and chest, dives
into the deep green end, reaches
for something on the bottom,
maybe an angel she painted
in kindergarten, all orange, black,
a ladybug singing in excelsis Deo.

How to feed me Life Savers
when my blood sugar dips so low
I can't remember anything
but my need for juice, cookie,
the steps of bite, chew, swallow,
bite again, as my mind untangles
the shoelaces of memory, finds
at its center knot this girl,
all leg, arm, body, DNA
of an encounter almost 13 years old,
when I reached out in the dark one night
and found the spark of love.

March 29: Friend's House, Mark Strand, "For Jessica, My Daughter"

I am hoping to watch a few episodes of American Horror Story:  Hotel with my daughter tonight.  It is Spring Break, and she hasn't been home in the evening very much.  She's been over at a friend's house, hanging out.  Not a boyfriend's house.  Just a friend.

Sometimes, I'm amazed that I had a part in creating my daughter.  She's smart and funny and beautiful and talented and graceful.  She's been talking about studying to be an anesthesiologist when she gets to college.  I looked at her this afternoon, felt my heart sort of unfold.

Saint Marty hopes that he's been a good father.

For Jessica, My Daughter

by:  Mark Strand

Tonight I walked,
lost in my own meditation,
and was afraid,
not of the labyrinth
that I have made of love and self
but of the dark and faraway.
I walked, hearing the wind in the trees,
feeling the cold against my skin,
but what I dwelled on
were the stars blazing
in the immense arc of sky.

Jessica, it is so much easier
to think of our lives,
as we move under the brief luster of leaves,
loving what we have,
than to think of how it is
such small beings as we
travel in the dark
with no visible way
or end in sight.

Yet there were times I remember
under the same sky
when the body's bones became light
and the wound of the skull
opened to receive
the cold rays of the cosmos,
and were, for an instant,
themselves the cosmos,
there were times when I could believe
we were the children of stars
and our words were made of the same
dust that flames in space,
times when I could feel in the lightness of breath
the weight of a whole day
come to rest.

But tonight
it is different.
Afraid of the dark
in which we drift or vanish altogether,
I imagine a light
that would not let us stray too far apart,
a secret moon or mirror,
a sheet of paper,
something you could carry
in the dark
when I am away.