Whatever your situation this Father’s Day, take a moment to immerse yourself in the eloquent wisdom of the poets who have been there before you.
Sir Ronald Ross, The Father
Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz
Quincy Troupe, Poem for My Father
Patrick Lewis, My Pa
Li-Young Lee, The Gift
Eduardo C. Corral, In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes
Michael Dickman, Shaving Your Father’s Face
Yehuda Amichai, A Child is Something Else Again
Terry Savoie, Father-Milk
Pete Oresick, My Father
Toi Derricotte, My dad & sardines
Anne Bradstreet, To Her Father with Some Verses
This one dates to the 17th century and begins: Most truly honoured, and as truly dear,If worth in me or ought I do appear,Who can of right better demand the sameThan may your worthy self from whom it came? He is much the smooth, grass-brown slopesreaching knee-high around you as you walk;I am the cracks of cliffs and gullies,pieces of secret deep in the back of the eye. But he is still my father, and I his son. he wipes a tear from the corner of his eye,wraps it in a white handkerchief for church
William Carlos Williams, Danse Russe
This poem describes a father’s time to himself when the rest of his family are sleeping. He dances naked in front of a mirror and admires his body as if holding onto his own personhood, however silly it is, in these rare moments of solitude. Yesterday, against admonishment,my daughter balanced on the couch back,fell and cut her mouth. Because I saw it happen I knewshe was not hurt, and yeta child’s blood so redit stops a father’s heart. tiny blood thrust, tiny trillion cells trilling and trilling,little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat, little best of me.
Ebony Stewart, “Happy Father’s Day”
When my dad told me You will always be my daughter maybe it was like that. Will I be allowed to come back to earth and be your son? This is the silence around the poem of the death of my father.This is the silence before the poem. I buried my father in my heart.Now he grows in me, my strange son,my little root who won’t drink milk,little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,little clock spring newly wetin the fire, little grape, parent to the futurewine, a son the fruit of his own son,little father I ransom with my life.
