1. A Father and a Dad Are Not the Same
A father and a dad are not the same:
One can be a dad and not a father,
Or one can be a father and not bother
To earn through love the more endearing name.
Some find fatherhood a bit too tame,
Leaving all the details to the mother,
Or dumping the sweet burden on another
Man with just a passing twinge of shame.
You have been our dad so many years
That you've become the landscape that is home,
The mountain that we look to from afar.
No matter where we go we're not alone,
For you remain within to still our fears
And be the word that tells us who we are.
2.To Be a Good Father, What Must One Do?
To be a good father, what must one do?
First one must love, as the sun warms the Earth,
Nourishing those to whom it gave birth
With radiant pleasure and joy ever new.
And what then, my father, must a good father do?
Then one must give of oneself, as a rill
Flings itself carelessly down a steep hill
To fill up a hollow with heaven's sweet hue.
What next, my father, must a good father do?
Next one must gird up one's loins to protect
Those who might suffer from want and neglect
Were one not loyal, and to one's vow true.
Is there anything else a good father must do?
Yes, there is much more that cannot be said,
Addressed to the heart and not to the head
Of one who desires that passion to view.
But ah!, my dear father, that one is not you!
3. Even though we've lived apart,
I do not love you less.
There's provision in the heart
For storing tenderness.
There's a love that like a star
Must reconfigure space
To turn the far-flung wanderers
Towards some predestined grace.
Time matters not, nor pain, nor death,
Nor fate as hard as stone.
This truth needs but a single breath,
And that we now have known.
Ah, Father! What a joy to live
With love at last expressed!
Life has no greater gift to give
Than that with which we're blessed
4. To My Dads on Father's Day Music: Ground.
To my dads on Father's Day,
On both of whom we both depend:
My daughter reinvents my themes.
Years pass, and well-wrought love remains.
Dads are saviors, straight or gay,
Always where our oceans end,
Deliverers of desperate dreams,
Solid land where sunshine reigns.
