Tag: Child

The Stranger

( Adapted from a popular Curling song.)

Whose that stranger, Mother dear? Look he knows us, ain’t that queer!

Hush my own. Don’t act so dumb. He’s your Father, dearest one.

He’s my Father? Not at all. Father passed away last fall.

Father didn’t die, you urchin. Father’s just been busy church’in.

Now he’s been released you see. Has no place to go or be.

No assignments to speak or phone. That is why he’s always home.

(Maybe he’ll be in the Stake. That would give us all a break.)

Kiss him. He won’t hurt you pet. He’s just  not quiet adjusted yet.

-Doug Garrett

Growing Things With Kelly

We have planted things together through the years.
Some planted with our laughter, some our tears.
Of all the things our garden ever grew,
Were the Children that God gave me and you.

When all were seedlings, how were we to know
How beautiful these things would one day grow?
How precious, as we now enjoy their shade,
The difference having children really made.

Have courage then for Christ is yet our strength.
He takes us to the path’s most utter length,
Where we meet again, with all that we have sown,
What matters most? The children we have grown.

-Doug Garrett

My Child

For Rowan (1978)

Above my child’s bed I stand and stare.
How peaceful, how angelic lying there.

Yet was it not this very night,
Not waiting nor listening to his plight 
I swept his reaching arms aside,
All reason gone, my patience tried?

His hands now tucked between his knees and clasped,
What part of my feelings had he grasped?

How soon the boy will be a man,
Yet so much first he needs to understand.
A searching spirit reaching outward from inside
Pleads with me silently to subside.

I’ll try again despite his clamber and rude calls,
All those things that build such solid walls,
To hear with love and cease this fruitless fight,
Remembering the tenderness I feel tonight.

-Doug Garrett