This is What You Should Do

This is what you shall do;
love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labour to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known
or unknown
or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons
and with the young
and with the mothers of families....
re-examine all you have been told at school  or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem...
not only in its words,
but in the silent lines of its lips and face....
and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman  from preface of "Leaves of Grass"
classification:  inspiration
Thank you to Valerie for the picture

I'd Rather Be the Father

Right from the start, it's easier to be the father; no morning

nausea, no stretch marks.  You can wait outside the

delivery room and keep your clothes on.  Notice how

closely the word mother resembles smother, notice

how she is either too strict or too lenient:  wrong for giving up 

everything or not enough.  Psychology books blame her 

for whatever is the matter with all of us while the father

slips into the next room for a beer.I wanted to be

the rational one, the one who told a joke at dinner,

If I were her father we would throw a ball across

the lawn while the grill fills with smoke.  But who

wants to be the mother?  Who wants to tell her what 

to wear and deliver her to the beauty shop and explain

bras and tampons?  Who wants to show her what

a woman still is? I am supposed to teach her how to

wash the dishes and do the laundry only I don't want

her to grow up and be like me.  I'd rather be the father

who tells her she is loved; I'd rather take her fishing

and teach her to skip stones across the lake of history;

I'd rather show her how far she can spit.

by Faith Shearin, from "Moving the Piano"

Austin University Press, 2011

classification:  Home and Family