One More Sonnet

Category: children

  • Free Will

    Free Will

    He came, he went, left me none the wiser.
    More or less, it seems, this was his intent.
    I am, through him, left the improviser.
    It’s mine: mine to wonder, mine to invent,
    mine to discover; with free-will to dream.
    I am, myself, an independent soul.
    And so it was. He left me here to redeem
    from his departure – that gift – a morsel
    of truth so simple, so perfect, so brief;
    and yet so difficult to comprehend.
    I am free to doubt and state disbelief:
    to question his way to my journey’s end.
    . This then is the gift of my father’s breath,
    . I need no longer fear the time of death.

    © Tim Grace, 8 April 2012
    (Revised: 20 August 2023)

    To the reader: The perfect gift is free-will. What a clever deception. It’s like a kite; useless without string. Hand a child a beautiful kite and after days of frustration he or she will soon ask for the attachment. Upon receiving the greatest gift of all we are burdened with responsibility; we are chained to free-will’s insatiable curiosity; indebted to its reciprocal loop of expectation. The moral burden of free-will is unforgiving; ultimately, I must account for my transgressions … for the choice was mine.

    To the poet: A bundle of tangled thoughts about parenting and the delegation of authority through moral expectation. Religious overtones abound… capitalise the ‘H’ in ‘he’ and you have a sermon; without, it’s a son’s contemplation of his father’s developmental influences: distantly demanding, vaguely judgemental and omnipotently present… your choice; but have you thought about the consequences and can you afford the cost? They are yours alone to bear.

     

    free will Free Will
    Picture Source:
    http://youtu.be/jOXyvo2ID_o

     

  • Space to Crawl

    Space to Crawl

    Yesterday, I watched a boy crawling
    commando-style across a carpet-rug.
    Giggling and chortling, rising and falling,
    pushing and pulling with a hauling tug.
    In jungle-greens he scampered, head down low.
    He moved in spits and spurts. He paused a while.
    He reset direction, then off he’d go.
    With syncopated skim and cherub’s smile;
    through a forest of legs, he spied a light:
    a destination worthy of pursuit.
    But, when almost there, with his goal in sight,
    down came the arms of love: “Aren’t you cute!”
    . His mission is to walk, stand proud and tall;
    . give the boy some freedom, some space to crawl.

    © Tim Grace, 31 January 2012

    To the reader: The school-day is all but done. Here comes a troop of toddlers and their yet-to-walk entourage in pushers and prams. They are the freedom fighters, come to release their brothers and sisters from the tyranny of school. One in particular catches my eye; he’s a rug-rat, escaped surveillance and making good ground … but like so many before him, his noble pursuit is thwarted; he is lifted to higher ground by the doting arms of mum… another man down, or up as the case may be.

    To the poet: A photograph might have captured the scene more faithfully; but not the story. The story is in the poem which is a figment of my imagination. No-one else, on the day, had any idea of my interpretation. In a fleeting moment I captured a metaphor… two thoughts combined; and so began my sonnet. Metaphors, like butterflies, are at their best in flight; pressed to the page they may lose their colour.

     

    Space to Crawl Space to Crawl
    Picture Source:
    http://youtu.be/XGbfqM0ToM8