Happy Fathers' Day!

By the time anyone will be reading this, it will be the Day of the Dad. I wanted to write a poem to celebrate my dad, but then I realized I'm not a good enough poet for that yet, so here's a poem by Robert Hayden:


"Those Winter Sundays"

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

But that is totally cheating. So here's another, completely unrelated, poem I wrote. Not today, a long time ago. Because two half cheats make a whole cheat, or something.


Steady hands
conducting a power stronger
and truer than electricity
A stream of sparks
brighter than electrons
coursing through the copper wire of my hair
into my deepest being.


Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you.