Pause For Poetry:
Michael Hawkes /44

Prodigious Returns

A poem by Michael Hawkes

A father meets his son,

Whom he hasn’t seen for years;

They settle on the sofa with some sandwiches and beers.

Father asks about the future,

About the young man’s prospects,

His ambitions, hopes and fears.

The son enquires about the past,

About the things that didn’t last,

About the many absences and various careers.

Thus their kindred spirits meet,

Their contrarieties converge

To shape this fleeting moment, taken out of time

To be a moment of emergence,

Of abundance and completion,

In which temporal biographies inexorably combine.

To weave a common braided thread

That links the unborn to the dead,

Inextricably entangled in a hereditary line.

When time comes for them to part,

Both hearts are emptied yet replete,

With all that they had found to share,

Now disencumbered and complete

One moves toward the shadows

While the other greets the glare.

05/04/22 –  Hawkes

CAS POETRY READING ON MAY 17

The Centre des arts de Stanstead is pleased to present Poets Rachel McCrum and Jonathan Lamy who will read from their work in an online event taking place Tuesday, May 17 at 7 pm, on Zoom, with host Shelley Pomerance. For the link to participate, visit the CAS Facebook page. 

Feature image: Jacub Gomez, Pexels

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