Remnant

Oh, son with limber ligaments,

Elastic mind and sinew,

Let what remains of your youth

Stretch much further than mine has,

Let your vigour for adventure

Weather many winters.

Let your glittering eyes

Shine through every storm.

Spend your days in innocence

Picking flowers for your mother

And learn nothing of

The treachery of lechery.

Clothe yourself in all things joyful

And arm yourself with skills uncommon

Building bridges to others

Not walls to keep them out.

The flame that burns so brightly

If reduced to embers can survive,

Being blown into action days later

By desperate measures

From desperate lungs.

My lungs.

I’ll be your bellows

To forge within you

Strength I only heard of in age.

You’ll be better than me,

An anchor, a muster point

A lighthouse.

For those surviving the blight

Of those specters in the night

And for all of them, you’ll point

To the rising son.