Walking away
(The months of May and June we celebrate graduation at all levels of schooling, reflecting upon the path behind our child and their journey ahead. Whether it is your little child’s first day at school or your now young adult child stepping onto that college campus, this classic poem by Cecil Day Lewis continues to capture the heart of the parent.)
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away.
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
(From BBC Bitesize)
(Image from Pexels.com)
Thank you for caring and sharing appropriately...
Consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Except where noted, all design, writing and images ©2024 by Debra Black and TheFaceofGraceProject.com. All Rights Reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including downloading, photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission or to report violations please email: thefaceofgraceproject@gmail.com
