A Father and a Dad Are Not the Same A father and a dad are not the same: One can be a dad and not a father, Or one can be a father and not bother To earn through love the more endearing name. Some find fatherhood a bit too tame, Leaving all the details to the mother, Or dumping the sweet burden on another Man with just a passing twinge of shame. You have been our dad so many years That you've become the landscape that is home, The mountain that we look to from afar. No matter where we go we're not alone, For you remain within to still our fears And be the word that tells us who we are.   A Little Girl Needs Daddy A little girl needs Daddy For many, many things: Like holding her high off the ground Where the sunlight sings! Like being the deep music That tells her all is right When she awakens frantic with The terrors of the night. Like being the great mountain That rises in her heart And shows her how she might get home When all else falls apart. Like giving her the love That is her sea and air, So diving deep or soaring high She'll always find him there.   A Mother Casts Her Dreams into the Sea A mother casts her dreams into the sea; We, the words sent bobbing towards the sun, The eggs of stone, the shards of prophesy. Because she must conclude her melody And fall back to the sweet dark hush of One, A mother casts her dreams into the sea, Hoping to cross that wild infinity And on some infant shore again to run, The eggs of stone, the shards of prophesy Outside the fiery circle of memory, The howling surf, the incessant years undone … A mother casts her dreams into the sea And then dissolves into a tapestry, Her rolling, helpless drift again begun, The eggs of stone, the shards of prophesy Afloat once more upon eternity, Once more the alien fury, never done … Again, again, her dreams into the sea, The eggs of stone, the shards of prophesy!   Although a Daughter, I Write This as a Mother Although a daughter, I write this as a mother. We're both mothers now, of child-daughters: You, a grandmother forced to be a mother, And I, a widow, alone with my fatherless daughter. Death has thus shaped both our lives in ways We would not have chosen. Yet life is still the bright, Painfully lovely thing it was always: Our children like dancers on a dark, splendid night, Needing our loves as I needed yours; your love The same song as ever, a lullaby I remember So well from my time in your arms. We move In slow spirals towards the stars. September Has weeks like June, yet is closer to the fall. Love has no answers, yet its beauty answers all.