Imagine if all of us received “The Blessing”

One of my  favourite poems…

The Blessing

(For Tom Fitzpatrick)

Somewhere this side of manhood,

I missed a moment,

a tiny, small moment,

but one that would have assuaged

much of the son ache,

the aloof pain, the forty years

of father-hunger carved in my heart.

Here’s what it would look like

had it happened:

My father holding me in his Indian-brown arms,

looking me in the eye, father eye to son eye,

and moving his lips to words

he had never heard from his father

but had, miraculously, found somewhere –

under a magic rock or in a river,

maybe on the lips of a dream father

or from a group of warrior brothers,

holding me in his Indian-brown arms

and saying:

Son, you have all you need

to be a strong, loving man.

Son, you have all you need

to be a strong, loving man.

Son, you have all you need

to be a strong, loving man.

Not three times, really, this Father-to-Son,

but once with the profundity of three,

of three trillion, as every cell in my body

blooms with your words

and I feel the first solid stirrings of manhood –

not just in my crotch

but in the catch of my heart,

in the tips of my fingers over skin,

in the tips of my toes over earth,

until my arms, my thin pale arms,

are Indian-brown like yours and strong enough

to hold my own son and say these words:

Son, you have all you need

to be a strong, loving man.

Son, you have all you need

to be a strong, loving man.

Son, you have all you need

to be a strong, loving Man.

Circle complete,

all of us complete,

blessings begun.

From: The Song of Father-Son: Men in Search of The Blessing, Peter H. Putnam