The last time I wrote an entry in my Neverending Top Ten series, I was trying to come to terms with my feelings over Sam starting school and the inevitable sense of letting go that comes with this.
Lying in bed the other night, I heard this poem on the radio and after a few lines my pillow was pretty soaked...
Walking Away
by C-Day Lewis
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
Here's a song in similar vein, one I've featured here before and will no doubt feature again, one that has a similar effect on me and reminds me to treasure every moment...
Damn my leaking eyes!
ReplyDeleteIn a similar vein, and in case your pillow dries out, I think you might get something out of a poem called Dad Reins, by Luke Wright.
Thank you, Martin. Particularly effective considering his son is also called Sam.
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ReplyDeleteI'm hoping Cats In The Cradle won't ever be me either, but it's always there as a reminder to not take what I've got for granted.
DeleteSorry but think I over-shared, again!
DeleteNever.
DeleteHe's a lucky boy to have you as a dad, treasuring every moment.
ReplyDeleteI only wish I could say the same about my father, who sadly shows no interest in me or anything I've done - so that's the other side of things!
Well, that's a terrible loss for him - perhaps even more so than for you.
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