A Poem for My Children, by Adrian G R Scott

I am not sure how well
I fathered you; only
you can tell, and I
am scared to ask.

As you grew
we played the hide
and seek of spring,
tucking you to bed
I glimpsed gloom
and glow in your dreams,
and we voyaged the seas
of juvenescence that
are always sailed before
the maps can be made.

At Christmas I was
Santa, you mistook
me for the crimson king,
kissing me with innocent
lips, eyes shining before
the Herod of adulthood
carried off your infancy.

I waged the grown-up war
only to make you casualties.
For that and many other failings
as a father, je suis désolé. 

In recompense and to offset
my faults, I want you to
know how the world has
made itself known to me.

Life will not present itself
to you like low-hanging
fruit in easy orchards.
Sadly others will get
the applause as you stand
in the wings and watch,
but trust me, plaudits
are a masquerade.

Your life is within,
a fine filament
that arises in your
given soul. This is the
place the great tales
speak of; where
the tenderness of your
regrets will beckon
to a desperate crossing
and a dark doorway.

Then you,
like Theseus,
will find that to face a
minotaur you follow
that glimmering strand
to the wounded bird
of your vulnerability
laying between his
subtle hooves.

In that meeting
the monster will
be your teacher,
unveiling in you
the unquenchable
font of life.

Then you will never
have to ask a stranger
to tell you who you are;
you will have stepped
onto your spot-lit mark,
and the soft memory
of my voice will
be your prompt. 

From The Call of the Unwritten, Adrian G R Scott, ISBN 978-1-4461-3806-9.

Last Rites, by Adrian G R Scott

When I am gone,
take up your kitchen broom,
sweep three stars down
from the cobwebbed sky.

Place the first in my coffin;
its bleach-bright light
will suffuse my guttered flame,
waken life's soiled toil
to the tear-dried home,
prepared.

Place the second
in my tended garden,
where my gardener
will look for me,
where it all started.

Place the last on a chain
around your neck;
wear it as a sacrament
of the lights we kindled.

Then when the stars
tumble from the sky
at the end, our shining
will illuminate scars on
love's invincible face.

From The Call of the Unwritten, by Adrian G R Scott, available here.