Tag: Parent

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

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