Fathers' Day Delayed

A Boy and His Dad
by Edgar Guest

A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip—
There is a glorious fellowship!
Father and son and the open sky
And the white clouds lazily drifting by,
And the laughing stream as it runs along
With the clicking reel like a martial song,
And the father teaching the youngster gay
How to land a fish in the sportsman's way.
* * *
Which is happier, man or boy?
The soul of the father is steeped in joy,
For he's finding out, to his heart's delight,
That his son is fit for the future fight.
He is learning the glorious depths of him,
And the thoughts he thinks and his every whim;
And he shall discover, when night comes on,
How close he has grown to his little son.

Working Late
by Louis Simpson

A light is on in my father's study.
"Still up?" he says, and we are silent,
looking at the harbor lights,
listening to the surf
and the creak of coconut boughs.
He is working late on cases.

No impassioned speech! He argues from evidence,
actually pacing out and measuring,
while the fans revolving on the ceiling
winnow the true from the false.

Once he passed a brass curtain rod
through a head made out of plaster
and showed the jury the angle of fire--
where the murderer must have stood.
For years, all through my childhood,
if I opened a closet . . . bang!
There would be the dead man's head
with a black hole in the forehead.

All the arguing in the world
will not stay the moon.
She has come all the way from Russia
to gaze for a while in a mango tree
and light the wall of a veranda,
before resuming her interrupted journey
beyond the harbor and the lighthouse
at Port Royal, turning away
from land to the open sea.

Yet, nothing in nature changes, from that day to this,
she is still the mother of us all.
I can see the drifting offshore lights,
black posts where the pelicans brood.
And the light that used to shine
at night in my father's study
now shines as late in mine.

In the USA, last Sunday was devoted to the celebration of Fathers. Because everyone in my household was ill last Sunday, we decided to postpone the celebration until today. To be honest, I am in the midst of three very gruelling weeks of work, and I am hardly home one night a week. I am road-weary.

Thirteen years ago I crossed one of life's Great Rubicons when I met my son for the first time in the back room of an adoption agency. Today, I got a great card from him and a very elegant pale blue Polo summer robe and pajama set. Along with a late lunch and a couple of pints of Bass Ale.

The best thing? The just-out-of-bed-hair-sticking-out-in-all-directions-five-minute-hug I got from him at the start of the day. Which erased the weariness. Gave me back the twelve days in the past two weeks I have been away. Making me ever so thankful that this particular Rubicon appeared before me all those years ago. And that I was blessed with the privilege of sailing, blind, across it.