Large Fierce Mammal

Mrs. LFM photo

In past seasons I have written here of such Dark Sentiments as True Love, how to tell when it is, and its perils when unrequited. You can roll around in some samples from this list of links:

• Dark Sentiments – Day 28 (True Love)
• Dark Sentiments Season 9 — Day 21: When is Love “True”?
• Dark Sentiment Season 9 — Day 25: Unrequited Love

Even as these are essential reading for the budding Men Mrs. LFM and I are rearing, I posit Fathercraft to be a Dark Sentiment in a realm of its own as it contains all the aforesaid elements and such other non-trivialities as previously spoken of in Dark Sentiments Season 7 – Day 16: The Magick of Words, Dark Sentiments Season 11 — Day 30: Immortality, and Courage, to name but a few.

Tonight, here’s more pumped from the same vein.

Fathercraft

By LFM

A boy will watch his Father
And then emulate in play,
More of how he acts
Than any words that he might say.

He can rant and roar and lecture
As a Captain on the sea,
And none of it will matter
To the Man the boy will be.

Thus, who would be a Father
Needs must know a thing or ten,
Of what it is and isn’t
In the Art of crafting Men.

Your Father bears a sacred Trust
He’ll carry to the end,
He’s not your lord and master,
Nor any kind of “friend”.

His job’s to mold and shape you,
But not to make you him,
To be the strong and lofty branch
That bears the pliant limb.

He’s not to make you happy
But to teach you how to be.
To conduct yourself with Honour
When there’s none but you to see.

No finer mantle for a Man
Than Father worn as noun.
The meagre verb is easy fit
For any good-time clown.