A Valentine for Father's Day

It’s Father’s Day and I find myself thinking about a Valentine’s gift from decades past. I was 13 and had been awkwardly writing rhymes and prose for at least five years, and my father gave me my first book of "serious" poetry. Pictures of sunset beaches, glacier lakes and mountain creeks were scenic backdrops against flowing words from Shakespeare, Longfellow and Tennyson. Both the poems and the stunning nature photography represented a magical future, ancient past and expressive present as well as a father’s tender heart.

Today, the Valentine’s book still automatically falls open to my first favorite poem and the accompanying idyllic and tranquil picture. I remember staring for hours at the sun dappled pasture on a gentle hill covered with honeysuckle. A single tree cast a long shadow on lushly minted grounds and arose majestically meeting the dark forest edge in the distance. The setting sun beckoned the chestnut horses into the shadows stilling their tails as their noses burrowed into lush clover. The poet's words lived in my heartbeats along with rhythms from the smallest pony and I imagined the words that one day, I would write.

My father has given me many things over time but the gifts most treasured, I found that day reading what remains a favored poem and looking at nature’s gifts to mankind. My father's nurturing love gave me belief in self, independence in spirit, and philosophy in life.

On this Father’s Day, I give back to him, and to each of you, the poem he first gave me.

I THINK I COULD TURN AND LIVE WITH ANIMALS

I think I could turn and live with animals, they
are so placid and self-contained:
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine
about their condition;
They do not lie awake
in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick
discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with
the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived
thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the
whole earth.

Walt Whitman