Belated for Parents' Days ...

I read this yesterday and it moved me, spoke for me with such force and composure that I post it here in Father's Day's honor.

Words for My Daughter from the Asylum*
by Hayden Carruth

Alas, that earth's mere measure strains our blood
And makes more airy still this parentage.
The bonding is all pretending, and you sleep
When my affections leap
And gasp at old hope vainly in my night's cage.

Dear marvelous alien snippet, yes, you move
Like a down-raining cloud in my mind, a bird
Askim on low planes under lightning thought,
An alter-image caught
In gossamer seed, my most elusive word.

There must be some connection, more than mood,
The yearning wit of loneliness, and more
Than meets the law on that certificate.
Strangers do not create
Alliances so deep and dark and sore.

Yet we are strangers. I remember you
When you began, a subtle soft machine;
And you remember me, no, not at all,
Or maybe you recall
A vacancy where someone once was seen.

I can address you only in my mind
Or, what's the same, in this untouching poem.
We are the faceless persons who exist
Airily, as a gist
Of love to twist the staid old loves of home.

Strangers we are, a father and a daughter,
This Hayden and this Martha. And this song,
Which turns so dark when I had meant it light,
Speaks not at all of the right
And not at all, since they are dim, of wrong.

Distance that leaves me powerless to know you
Preserves you from my love, my hurt. You fare
Far from this room hidden in the cold north;
Nothing of me goes forth
To father you, lost daughter, but a prayer.

That some small wisdom always may endure
Amidst your weariness; that lovers may
Be kind to you; that beauty may arouse
You; that the crazy house
May never, never be your home: I pray.

Here's today's feeble draft of my own poem I posted long ago, 2005 or '6, somewhere else ...

In a Dream, My Mother Became a Cabbage, Cruciferae
by ShirleyMills

In one dream she’s shell-shocked.
Gun-shy, maybe.
I keep taking her hand.
We’re house-hunting. Sometimes
she sits near me on a city bus.
Or she rests on velvet
in a bed of illness, looking scared.
I hold her smooth, pale legs.
I rub the soles of her feet.

In a past life my mother was a bull-dancer
and I the wealthy patroness who loved her.
From my seat at the arena
I saw her fall on the horns.
I never forgave myself.

In this morning’s dream
my mother was a cabbage, Cruciferae,
a firm cool globe I toted under an arm.
I pared off the ruined spots -
after all, just skin deep -
put a square of her on my tongue,
and chewed.

She was sweet and good.

* From Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991 (1991) by Hayden Carruth.