in the meantime, while i'm figuring out templates and all that other fun stuff, i give you two poems that inspire and inform my parenting every day.

first, kahlil gibran, on children

your children are not your children.
they are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
they come through you but not from you,
and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

you may give them your love but not your thoughts,
for they have their own thoughts.
you may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
you may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

you are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
the archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and he bends you with his might
that his arrows may go swift and far.
let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
for even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so he loves also the bow that is stable.


and now, philip larkin - this be the verse

they fuck you up, your mum and dad.
they may not mean to, but they do.
they fill you with the faults they had
and add some extra, just for you.

but they were fucked up in their turn
by fools in old-style hats and coats,
who half the time were soppy-stern
and half at one another's throats.

man hands on misery to man.
it deepens like a coastal shelf.
get out as early as you can,
and don't have any kids yourself.