Creative Traditional:

[ChrisA]

My Philosophical Father



We sat together in the living room, father and son

And he talked about the latest book he read,

Some new idea; that night it was Emerson

Who I’d written a dozen papers about in college,

But tonight I pretended to know nothing of “the language

Of natural fact,” and instead, I humored the philosopher

By allowing him to teach me the new idea over again,

I wanted him to have the enjoyment of knowing

Everything, at least for the moment, not that I wasn’t

Listening but the way his bushy eyebrows ran up into

His forehead when he asked a question, recalled to me

The time he stopped to point out the enormously deformed tree

Bending over a pond, and by the heaviness of its branches,

Barely able to hold itself, without falling—and he

Marveled at Nature, my philosophical father, always

Astonished, he asked me, “How do you think that tree

Manages to stay alive?”



CRA 11/27/2006

[lanaia74]

Totally AWESOME!