"These Scout trips you make with your son,
I think you force them.
He really doesn't want to go."
You could be right; but it makes no difference.
I do what I must - I'm a father of 17 year-old son.
You will have your daughters
For the rest of your life, the phone
like a third ear linking you to them so close.
The bond 'tween a son and his dad doesn't last so long.
A boy leaves his family as a man
Even when there is no wife to cleave to.
He goes away, looking back seldom,
Eyes forward and fixed on some certain point
Too vague for us to see,
Though on his horizon it gleams
With the brilliance of Oz.
I have only this year left,
these days, this moment,
Before he is lost to me
In the diaspora of adulthood.
This crop I sowed in winter's quiet,
You understand, don't you?
No foot dragging or bribery on my part
Will slow this ripening course;
The season rounds unstoppable to summer's questing.
We Chamberlins are a restless sort,
Not prone to settling on daddy's farm.
Perhaps it's a Norman disquiet,
That we can only pass as visitors, through
Tilled lands where generations of our friends
Live in Familial Harmony - father with son.
You see, I know our time is borrowed,
For I myself blazed trails unknown before;
And though I do not begrudge my son's pioneering,
Yet, I'd spend one more night with him,
Round my own campfire.
