A heartbreaker. The occasion is a televised BBC interview
and reading, with his daughter with him, and he looks at her being so little
and well-behaved, projects into the future envisioning her success, and
realizes he won’t be there to see it. The poem is flat and frank. It really is motivated
by love, I believe. How can anyone look at a little daughter and not be flushed
with this kind of feeling? Outside of various iterations of psychological monstrousness,
common enough but still on sojourn away from the kingdom of health, you can’t.
Turns out he’s human after all.
I wish I could find more to say in these responses about corporate
greed, the Cold War, a discovery that God exists—relevant stuff. Turns out
Dream Songs are extremely personal. More than I bargained for, from somebody
who is not easy to warm up to. But this is a moment of something else, not
fawning, doesn’t seem to be self-centered, nothing of shameful, humiliating
exhibitionism. Just a father leaving record of a moment of feeling for his
daughter. Tempus fugit.
"Your Mommy will be with you, when Henry's a blank, you'll have to study him in school...."
ReplyDeleteTough stuff. Reminds me, in a way, of Randy Pausch.