Let's take a look in the old Poetry Corner

A couple of weeks ago my son attended his first high school dance. He's a freshman, and the only reason he ended up going to the dance at all was that it was the type to which the girls invite the boys. He does not have a girlfriend, and at this age I just can't picture him picking up the phone and asking one of his female friends to be his date for a formal event. (I sure wasn't able to do it when I was 15; I guess that's why these "turnabout" dances are so common, and so well attended.) For this one, a girl from his class invited him, they went and had a moderately nice time, and all was well.

No stories worth the telling emerged from the evening. I bring it up because of what happened later. One of the photos my wife had taken of our duded-up son with his duded-up date came out beautifully, showing those two kids just bursting with freshness and youth, so I cropped it and sent it off by e-mail to a bunch of folks, including my in-laws.

In less than an hour, my father-in-law responded with the following:

"O for a loop of something, whipped
about and knotted,
that in defiance of chance and
change and wandering,
could hold and heft and stablish
all that is here and hoped for!"

He saw the picture, picked up his (figurative) pen, and dashed that off. Damn. I was pretty amazed, and still am. My father-in-law has a rare and powerful gift for making me want to howl with frustration, and sometimes that's all I remember about him. This exchange reminded me of his other gifts, equally rare, and why we're so lucky to still have him around.

I note that in its short history, this weblog has been heavy on the son, short on the daughter--an unintentional imbalance soon to be corrected.