136. Thoughts Scattered Like Leaves

You come to
your sense of daughter honestly
after two of them
and no-one else
after your love for your mother
a daughter always herself
after thinking on it
and taking your time.

Maybe you once thought
a daughter was something
to give away or someone
to give away but you don’t
think so now you know
that a daughter is
someone who returns
to her youth
to her parents
to her home.

We give nothing away
because a daughter
is never a secret
she is always that something
just there and a pulling
against an arm in
a direction away
but with you
a daughter is
a tug at a sleeve
an urging
rather than an insistence.

You never knew
what your daughters
would be and you
still don’t but
sometimes you saw in them
that idea of what
you wanted them to be
without knowing it
until that is what they were
that being the dream
of a father about his daughter
to find they had become
what he’d never dreamed
but always wanted
her to be.

You can hear her here
in your head she is
a voice in your head when
you are asleep she is
the voice in your ear
when you’re awake
so much so you cannot
think of hearing without
thinking of hearing
her for she is your evidence
of your purpose the reason
you still awake early
stack the wood
and make the tea
each morning as if
she were still there.

But to be a father
is to become eventually
alone
to be a father is to
give up what
you never wanted to lose
to let slip someone
you always needed
because your life was
a trek towards her
creation and yet
her leaving is a way
of growing forward
wider out it is the
way your life grows
larger once again
larger than you
it gives you meaning
and meaning is all
you have.

A whistle when you work
because you are afraid
of nothing because she
likes to hear the music
you make through your
lips and sometimes
she thinks your whistled
song is a message
to her that asks
her to leave.