The Grown-up

(For my children, Kelly, Erin, Geoff, and Siobhan)

It wasn’t a magical star
granting a childish wish
      that made me grown up,
nor was it an evil wizard’s
vengeful spell
      that made me old.

She looked at me,
secure there on my lap,
      Pooh flannel ‘jammies’
wrapping her in the security
of being young, and safe
      in Daddy’s arms.

I used to fly with Wendy and the boys,
run from pirates with young Jim Hawkins,
      that was the boy I was!
It seems only a few minutes ago
Gordon and I fought the Dervishes
      at far-away Khartoum.

It wasn’t cosmic stardust,
falling one mystic night,
      that wrought this change
from the carefree boy I was,
the discovering, exploring, querying
      consumer of countless books.

It was the knowledge, my child,
the sure and wondrous certainty
      that you awaited,
with your brother and sisters,
that made me run, singing,
      to be here with you today.

The Net Mender

He sits there on a lobster trap,
Outlined against the sky,
With mended fishnet on his lap,
And sadness in his eye.
          For he longs to sail the sea once more,
          And hear the gale wind's mighty roar;
          To match his wits against the sea;
          To pace the deck where the wind blows free;
          To lie in the shade of a tall palm tree;
          But he is old, and sad, and he
                    Must mend the nets.

His weathered brow is paler now:
His keen eyes not so bright:
Still he longs for the surge of a schooner's bow,
And the crackle of canvas, pulled tight.
          How well he remembers Jamaican night,
          And the reefs of the Great Australian Bight.
          And he longs for the life of the days gone by,
          Knowing that soon he surely must die.
          But when he has gone to his port in the sky,
          Where stately schooners and clipper ships ply,
                    Who will mend the nets?