There are some technical difficulties this morning, so I’ll just whet your appetite for now…and give you the goods later.
About once a month, I’ll be posting work from a poet whose work I’ve followed since I was very, very young — my dad. I’ve played around with writing poetry, but it’s one of those things I know that I know that I want to explore more fully. I attribute that desire, at least in part, to Dad’s faithfulness to the craft over the years. He pastors a church and works full-time teaching fourth grade on an Indian Reservation in New Mexico, so the work he has done has been in the midst of a very full life fraught with the tensions of everyday life that we all know and sometimes love, sometimes abhor.
I hear my Dad’s voice (his name is Al, by the way, or Alfred if your into something more formal) in his poetry, of course, but also the voices of the writers I know have shaped his mind: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, John Stott, Francis Schaeffer, and many others. I hear his years of battling illness. I hear his voice rumbling aloud at night, before bed, a story of hobbits and wraiths, the Shire, an eye, and a ring. I hear our shared dream to visit Oxford and walk that hallowed literary ground…and so much more.
I’m looking forward to sharing my dad with you in the coming months.
And…welcome to the blog, Daddy.
I am now officially a published poet. Thanks to my beautiful daughter. Thank you, Barbara.