Are Father's Necessary

GHAZAL: "ARE FATHERS NECESSARY?"
(IN RESPONSE TO A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE)

When our children were born, my husband's eyes glowed with dazzled joy.
His voice soothed like a pine tree’s sigh when he talked to them.

As they grew he held them up in the air so they could fly,
galloped them around piggyback, and took them to the zoo.

By firelight, he read each night, “Goodnight Moon,” and “Tintin.”
The wind rubbed squeaky twigs on windows, buffeted the house.

He loved to be with them, paid attention to our kids,
whether they were capsized by the storms of life, or winning.

He happily hid Easter eggs, loved to buy them presents,
taught them to play tennis, to be honest by example.

He never called balls out that weren’t, in tennis or in life,
but he said of those who did, “Dust must have blown in his eyes.”

He threw a tiny football to our grandson when he was two.
The ball floated, a falling leaf, into the little fellow’s arms.

He tends the roses that nod in his cultivated garden.
Their fragrance rides the breeze. We breathe scented, rose-sweet air.

My children are blessed that he is their father. I am too.
God's grace flew with the wind that blew him to me long ago.