Father

I chart my own course among the stars,

to travel among the celestial fields I've sown.

I will write my own sounds upon the bars,

which live upon these pages to be often heard.

You were forever absent when I was alone,

were never sought when conflict stirred.

Not once a spoken a word of wisdom,

only the vacant silence of your indifference.

I was the prince and king of my kingdom,

the only heir in my private world of discovery.

The lack of your memory was deliverance,

and my own love of life and my mystery.

I've long been a man of a father's age,

and you, no more real than when I was a child.

I am my own man and the world my stage,

and I'm the child of wonder and imagination.

You are but a shadowy figure in the wild,

an unknown antagonist, an accusation.

Father, what I will not become is you,

should my life and love so bless me that way.

I shall not do those things you would do,

leave both a woman and a child like a stranger.

Before all which I love so, I turn you away,

with indifference,  rejecting my anger.

Life is beautiful as it comes into being,

it finds comfort in the face of one we love so.

Strength is more in giving than in needing,

there is but one to whom I own true affection.

Thus hope fills my heart and mind as I go,

she fills my life,  offering me direction.

Brian Francis Hudon

June 11, 2019