It Is True 4-30-13

His clock set on the mantle.

The chime had faded nigh.
The sound had died without a tear.

I did not wonder why...

Not once had I heard father say,
"My daughter, I love you."

I guess I'd always wondered.
Did he?  Was it true?

---

I saw a paper on his desk.  A quill, upon it, laid.

The paper held some words in ink that soon came to my aid.

I sat upon his wooden chair that saw some better years.

And when I read the words he wrote, I burst out into tears.

He seemed to thrive at this old desk.  He seemed to like it so.

He seemed to want to help the sick - and others feeling low.

There comes a time when words must end and pen must be set down.

There comes a time when body dies - each verb, each subject, noun.

His hand had dropped that feathered pen.  His inkwell tipped and dried.

It seems he wrote his final thoughts on this before he died.

His strength had left his body.  Life's clock had taken toll.

When all his words had been used up, the last few left his soul...

BUT JOY survives the darkest night when Jesus lights the dawn!

And though the greatest poet fades, his words are never gone.

They're written for the ages.  They're never obsolete.

They're just as true as they were then - and lovingly complete.

There comes a time when someone else must take the feathered quill -

the quill that wrote so many words - and these that I hold still.

His hand had shaken violently where smears of ink had dried -

and this now pulls tears down my cheeks the day after he died.

I stared again at his last words, though splattered so with ink -

and read each word quite carefully - then paused a bit to think.

Expressed, he did, his final thoughts on paper I now cleave -

because he spilled his life on it.  And so I do believe.

---

His clock set on the mantle.

The chime had faded nigh.

My joyful tears were flowing now.

His words the reason why:

"I never heard my daughter say,
'Father, I love you.'

But you, my dear, I've always loved.
Believe it.  It is true."

©2013 louis gander ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

http://www.ganderpoems.org/

Never fail to say, "I love you." and mean it.

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