For my Beautiful son, Brandon <br /> <br /> <br />(Brandon, the world <br />depends on the existence of fire flies, <br />the simple kindness towards lesser things, <br />the magnanimity, the compassion <br />of not taking life simply because you can.) <br /> <br />Out playing with my son <br />in the day-dwindled dark <br />among the autumn leaves, <br />an enshrined firefly <br />cupped in the apse of my palm, <br />I stoop closer to show him <br />its brief luminosity like an halo, <br />a prayer candle in the breeze <br />its flame, flickering <br />in the grotto of my hands. <br /> <br />Suddenly, a swipe of the hand, <br />and the fall begins <br />with a child's first cruelty <br />and here we stand, guilty <br />by the depth of your stroke <br />that felled a star and made the sky dark <br />but for the full moons of your eyes <br /> <br />What shall I say to you now, <br />that you are only two <br />and your years thus far <br />have been but the calculation <br />of constants <br />like your parents, fixed planets, <br />fingering the flora of your golden hair <br />as they revolved about you. <br /> <br />This is the father’s dilemma, <br />whether to dispel as rumour <br />the faith in fairy tales and fire flies <br />to head off the terror <br />of learning on your own <br />that the world has no morals, <br />nature no ethics <br />steel you for a life of brutality <br />make you a bully, <br /> <br />Or nurture that spark of gentlenesss <br />as your jaw drops <br />at the that last spot of phosphor on your shoe, <br />and the glow of a firefly <br />dissapearing beneath the blades <br />like the sun going down on us both. <br /> <br />It is the end of the day, summer, <br />and the innocence of your ways. <br /><br />John Tansey<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-fathers-mortal-dilemma-on-fairy-tales-fire-fli/
