by Sophie Strand
for my dad
You do it although there are not many
to show you how: fathering. A spiritual
practice not practiced these days. But wielded.
Armed. Simplified.
So you look to the trees. The fir tree fathers
sending a syrup of sunshine and wind back into
the soil that slowly embraces, feeds the seed
of the fir tree father’s children. His green, countless children.
The mallard duck with emerald helmet, his wet stone
eyes fixed on the dusty backs of his little ones struggling against
the river current. He shows them to move with water,
with air, and in the rain, to hold still and let the dissolving
clouds wash their feathers.
How the bluestone mountain furred in green laurel leaves
overlooking our small town
is both a mother and a father.
How stone fathers. By holding the stream banks together.
Holding fossils and bone fragments. The recorder
and rememberer of ancestors. Veining the ground with
stability so when the branches
and dust and mineral of future stone falls, it falls
on a place that holds still and ready.
You learn from green things. From slow things.
Owls plucking shadow from shadow to feed
their own.
And then you start, knowing there is no end
to the learning, no right way forward.
Let’s walk, you say, taking my hand, Let’s go watch the birds.
