Poem for Father's Day
Jun 18, 2024![](https://kajabi-storefronts-production.kajabi-cdn.com/kajabi-storefronts-production/file-uploads/blogs/2147494476/images/fc01d36-b66a-5e3b-fc78-2ea844244c_unnamed.jpg)
On this father's day, I want to share a beautiful poem by David Whyte in honor of my father Rob Levin and my partner David Grimsley who are both amazing fathers. May it help you honor some fathers in your life too...
MY DAUGHTER ASLEEP by David Whyte
Carrying a child,
I carry a bundle
of sleeping
future appearances.
I carry
my daughter adrift
on my shoulder,
dreaming
her slender
dreams
and
I carry her
beneath
the window,
watching
her moon lit
palm
open
and close
like a tiny
folded
map,
each line
a path that leads
where I can't go,
so that I read her palm
not knowing
what I read
and
walk with her
in moon light
not knowing
with whom I walk,
making
invisible prayers
to go on
with her
where I can't
go,
conversing
with so many
unknowns
that must know her
more intimately
than I do.
And so to these
unspoken shadows
and this
broad night
I make
a quiet
request
to the
great parental
darkness
to hold her
when I cannot,
to comfort her
when I am gone,
to help her learn to love
the unknown
for itself,
to take it
gladly
like
a lantern
for the way
before her,
to help her see
where ordinary
light will
not help,
where happiness
has fled,
where faith
cannot reach.
My prayer tonight
for the great
and hidden symmetries
of life
to reward this
faith I have
and twin
her passages
of loneliness
with friendship,
her exiles
with home coming,
her first awkward
steps with
promised onward leaps.
May she find
in all this,
day or night,
the beautiful
centrality
of pure opposites,
may she discover
before she grows
old,
not to choose
so easily
between past
and present,
may she find
in
one or the other
her gifts
acknowledged.
And so
as I helped
to name her
I help to name
these
powers,
I bring
to life
what is needed,
I invoke
the help she'll
want
following
those moonlit lines
into a future
uncradled
by me but
parented
by all
I call.
As she grows
away
from me,
may these life lines
grow with her,
keep her safe,
so
with my open palm
whose lines
have run before her
to make a safer way,
I touch her
smooth cheek
and bless her,
this night
and beyond it,
and for every
unknown
night to come.
Give thanks for the nourishing masculine energy of the sun. May it bless all of our crops, vistas, and intentions in the coming Summer season.
Much love and light,
Hannah
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