Notes About The Poem
For Oscar pictured above.
Listen to poem:
Changing of the Guard
All alone in my silent confessions
long I have dwelt on secret battles fought,
and poison arrows of these obsessions
might pierce my last refuge methought.
Thirty-nine years before first gazed my own
tiny hands clutched in my father’s palms,
and in that spirit of love that I was shown
I hold yours and my baby in arms.
Behold, a changing of the guard I see
when I look at you looking back at me.
Today! Today! On this happy dawn
to me a millennia child is born!
My wait over in my thirty-ninth year
when wrapped inside your swaddled fleece,
and on my first watch would elated stare
upon nursling eyes shut in newborn peace.
But having crossed my Rubicon I wait
in new beginnings and wonders to be,
where new battles will rage and punctuate
the fullness of time in his century.
In our realtime between father and son
the future becomes yours, and now I trust
one day you wear the crown of succession
and forever love for love we must.
Behold, a changing of the guard I see
when I look at you looking back at me.
Today! Today! On this happy dawn
to me a millennia child is born!
To your cause I am heart and soul aware
no favour or fortune redeems me more,
that in my time I have a son and heir
who fills in me what was missing before.
Written: March 2000
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