David Adès: These Are the Men
Into the lush gardens of their hearts
they took me,
gardens of unexpected flowerings
amid bracken and tangles of vines
Kevin Shafer: Nurturing dads raise emotionally intelligent kids – helping make society more respectful and equitable
All men who support and care for children have a critical role to play in instilling positive social values in future generations.
Jay Carson: Railroad Bill
I have always lived within the sound
of the Pennsylvania Railroad
which moans, then sings, and rides me at night
to the sound of my father’s voice
James Crews: Tomatoes
He came back grinning, gripping
a bag of homegrown Beefsteaks so fat
they were already bursting their juices
through the brown paper
Michael Simms: Coming to Terms
There is no lasting happiness
in this world, only
particles of happiness,
fleeting, unpredictable,
transitory as a fragrance
or a falling leaf
Video: Joe Biden and Elizabeth Alexander discuss “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
President-elect Joe Biden, poet Elizabeth Alexander, psychologist Angela Duckworth, and a chorus of working fathers and sons join Poetry in America host Elisa New to reflect on Robert Hayden’s sonnet “Those Winter Sundays.”
Paul Christensen: Snow
Ghosts wear snow in the early morning hours and walk around like debutants at a ball. The wind lifts the hems of their long dresses and there is nothing beneath but a few dog tracks. How lonely it must be to be dead.
Video: Negative Space
Based on a 150-word poem by Ron Koertge, “Negative Space” is a short animated film that depicts a father-and-son relationship through the art of packing a suitcase.
Jeffrey Harrison: Double Visitation
There I was with my father again alive
walking around the back yard together,
and I hardly noticed that it wasn’t our back yard
or that he looked like he was in his fifties.
Majid Naficy: Fatherly Advice
Live every moment of your life
As if you are just born
Video: Daughter of the Sea
Daughter of the Sea is a cinematic poem evoking a fisherman’s relationship with his daughter and with the sea. Shot in the French town St Jean de Luz.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: Work
The father sanded the gunwales,the boy coiled the lines.
And I admired them there, each to his task
in the quiet of the long familiar.
Stephen Dobyns: No Map
To neither did I say how much
I loved them, nor express the extent of my fear.
Their bodies are delicate glass boxes
at which the world begins to fling its stones.
Baruch November: Summer, Duluth, M.N.
we reel
in crappie after crappie,
laughing at their name
and the ease at which
they are hooked
