I have daughters and I have sons

1

Who is out there at six a.m.?  The man

Throwing newspapers onto the porch,

And the roaming souls suddenly

Drawn down into their sleeping bodies.

2

Wild words of Jacob Bohme

Go on praising the human body,

But heavy words of the ascetics 

Sway in the fall gales.

3

Do I have a right to my poems?

To my jokes? To my loves?

Oh foolish man, knowing nothing -

Less than nothing - about desire.

4

I have daughters and I have sons.

When one of them lays a hand 

On my shoulder, shining fish

Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

5

At this age, I especially love dawn

On the sea, stars above the trees,

Pages in The Threefold Life,

And the pale faces of baby mice.

6

Perhaps our life is made of struts

And paper, like those early

Wright Brothers planes.  Neighbors

Run along holding the wingtips.

7

I do love Yeats's fierceness

As he jumped into a poem,

And that lovely calm in my father's

Hands, as he buttoned his coat.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey