Poetry host Denise Krebs inspired us at the ethicalela.com Open Write to use a mentor poem in our writing today – so I used Billy Collins’ “Irish Spider” and a stanza from Kevin Hodgson’s “Short Thoughts About Writing” (stories don’t exist until we speak) in today’s poem.
Preacher Dad
It was well worth traveling home
for Father’s Day
just to sit at the ancestral oak table eating piping hot chicken pot pie,
sharing wine and stories-
stories
don’t exist
until we speak
to laugh
reminisce
remember
and reflect
as he pretended
to be any old average dad
father of two ill-behaved
preacher’s kids
like God hadn’t given him an extra sprinkling of love and wisdom
for the task
but not fooling us for a minute!
Common Threads 