!Goretti Publications Gopherspace - Poetry
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To a Father
Donald P. Goodman III

Uncountable are all the things which make a man,
the universe which builds him up and forms his soul;
the buzzing world surrounding him within his clan,
the joys that he receives, the sorrows he must thole.
But only one of all the men who live and die
donates his very image to his tiny child,
and unremovably it doth within him lie,
outweighing all the others of which he's compil'd.
For all his life, the son to father doth compare;
'gainst father's strength and weakness all his own are pil'd;
O father!  source of that fine image that we share,
who taught us how our sorrows and our joys to bear!