Poems on Father (That Celebrates the Contribution of Fathers)
Poems on father magnify the charismatic impact of the father figure as well as the influence on children and the rest of the household.
Poems on Father
For most of us, a father is the most influential male figure in our lives. His actions and effort have guided us to the awareness of self and our responsibilities to self and society.
These poems on father are authentic works of art capturing the dynamics of being a father, role model, and guardian. These poems portray the significance of the father’s role and its influence on the family and community.
Fathers have in several ways led us into being active and valuable members of society. These poems on father explore the role of a father through the eyes of different writers at different times.
1. Anecdote for Fathers by William Wordsworth
I have a boy of five years old;
His face is fair and fresh to see;
His limbs are cast in beauty’s mold
And dearly he loves me.One morn we strolled on our dry walk,
Or quiet home all full in view,
And held such intermitted talk
As we are wont to do.My thoughts on former pleasures ran;
I thought of Kilve’s delightful shore,
Our pleasant home when spring began,
A long, long year before.
2. Bewitched Playground by David Rivard
Each could picture probably
With great care his brother drawing
The corded string of a watered silk bag
And mumbling to basho above the keepsake
Pay your respects to mother’s white hair
Now your eyebrows look a little white tooBut all have turned instead to watch this child
A girl my daughter simone
An astute migrant
Skimming the stream of days
Toted wherever she wants
To eat the dirt of inattentive towns
To arm wrestle as withThe blind & steal a stoic
Shipping him home—
All have turned & run to her because
She has a spider on her neck she has
Seen herself
Though blindfolded by a cloud
The sun is a yellowjacket
Drowning in a cup of coffee she carries
A spider in her hair
Blond & blonder dear river.
READ ALSO!!!
- Poems About Music
- Daughter to Father Poems After Death
- Thanksgiving Poems
- Poems to Describe Beauty
- Memorial Day Poem
3. On My First Son by Ben Jonson
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
4. Father
Facing some of the toughest times in life
Always seem a little easier with someone by your side
Two has always been better than one.
He taught me that and taught me how to have fun.
Everyone should be leaning on the other,
not pointing fingers and blaming one another.
Rest easy, fly high, until we meet again,
I’ve never say goodbye,
I’ll just say “until then.”
READ ALSO!!!
- Who Am I Poem
- Mental Health Poems
- Poems About the Beach
- Poems About the Ocean
- Missing a Sister Who Died
5. Childhood Ideogram by Larry Levis
I lay my head sideways on the desk,
My fingers interlocked under my cheekbones,
My eyes closed. It was a three-room schoolhouse,
White, with a small bell tower, an oak tree.From where I sat, on still days, I’d watch
The oak, the prisoner of that sky, or read
The desk carved with adults’ names: Marietta
Martin, Truman Finnell, Marjorie Elm;The wood hacked or lovingly hollowed, the flies
Settling on the obsolete & built-in inkwells.I remember, tonight, only details, how
Mrs. Avery, now gone, was standing then
In her beige dress, its quiet, gazelle print
Still dark with lines of perspiration fromThe day before; how Gracie Chin had just
Shown me how to draw, with chalk, a Chinese
Ideogram. Where did she go, white thigh
With one still freckle, lost in silk?No one would say for sure, so that I’d know,
So that all shapes, for days after, seemed
Brushstrokes in Chinese: countries on maps
That shifted, changed colors, or disappeared:
Lithuania, Prussia, Bessarabia;
The numbers four & seven; the question mark.That year, I ate almost nothing.
I thought my parents weren’t my real parents,
I thought there’d been some terrible mistake.
At recess I would sit alone, seeingIn the print of each leaf shadow, an ideogram—
Still, indecipherable, beneath the green sound
The bell still made, even after it had faded,
When the dust-covered leaves of the oak tree
Quivered, slightly, if I looked up in time.And my father, so distant in those days,
Where did he go, that autumn, when he chose
The chaste, faint ideogram of ash, & I had
To leave him there, white bones in a puzzleBy a plum tree, the sun rising over
The Sierras? It is not Chinese, but English—
When the past tense, when you first learn to use it
As a child, throws all the verbs in the language
Into the long, flat shade of houses you
Ride past, & into town. Your father’s driving.On winter evenings, the lights would come on earlier.
People would be shopping for Christmas. Each hand,
With the one whorl of its fingerprints, with twenty
Delicate bones inside it, reaching up
To touch some bolt of cloth, or choose a gift,
A little different from any other hand.You know how the past tense turns a sentence dark,
But leaves names, lovers, places showing through:
Gracie Chin, my father, Lithuania;
A beige dress where dark gazelles hold still?
Outside, it’s snowing, cold, & a New Year.The trees & streets are turning white.
I always thought he would come back like this.
I always thought he wouldn’t dare be seen.
6. Father by Edgar Albert Guest
My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There’s nothing that he cannot do,
He knows no word like “fail.”
“Our confidence” he would restore,
Of that there is no doubt;
But if there is a chair to mend,
We have to send it out.All public questions that arise,
He settles on the spot;
He waits not till the tumult dies,
But grabs it while it’s hot.
In matters of finance he can
Tell Congress what to do;
But, O, he finds it hard to meet
His bills as they fall due.It almost makes him sick to read
The things law-makers say;
Why, father’s just the man they need,
He never goes astray.
All wars he’d very quickly end,
As fast as I can write it;
But when a neighbor starts a fuss,
’Tis mother has to fight it.In conversation father can
Do many wondrous things;
He’s built upon a wiser plan
Than presidents or kings.
He knows the ins and outs of each
And every deep transaction;
We look to him for theories,
But look to ma for action.
READ ALSO!!!
- Christmas Poems
- Poems About Family
- Poems About Death of a Father
- Teacher Appreciation Poem
- Valentine’s Day Poems
7. Grandfather by Michael S. Harper
In 1915 my grandfather’s
neighbors surrounded his house
near the dayline he ran
on the Hudson
in Catskill, NY
and thought they’d burn
his family out
in a movie they’d just seen
and be rid of his kind:
the death of a lone black
family is the Birth of a Nation,
or so they thought.His 5’4” waiter gait
quenched the white jacket smile
he’d brought back from watered
polish of my father
on the turning seats,
and he asked his neighbors
up on his thatched porch
for the first blossom of fire
that would bring him down.They went away, his nation,
spittooning their torched necks
in the shadows of the riverboat
they’d seen, posse decomposing;
and I see him on Sutter
with white bag from your
restaurant, challenged by his first
grandson to a foot-race
he will win in white clothes.I see him as he buys galoshes
for his railed yard near Mineo’s
metal shop, where roses jump
as the el circles his house
toward Brooklyn, where his rain fell;
and I see cigar smoke in his eyes,
chocolate Madison Square Garden chews
he breaks on his set teeth,
stitched up after cancer,the great white nation immovable
as his weight wilts
and he is on a porch
that won’t hold my arms,
or the legs of the race run
forwards, or the film
played backwards on his grandson’s eyes.
Fathers are iconic figures no doubt. They shoulder these responsibilities for their lifetime. It is important they know of our appreciation either spoken or written and this article makes that possible.
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