They don't call me often, but I always  know it's them
When the calls come late at night, or
At moments that pressures from every other part my life
Are unbearable-

That's when they call

With life or death issues
Who is sick or leaving their spouse or
-God forbid I ever get this one again-
In the hospital having failed a suicide?

They call me and I know in their voices
Things are either wrong or very wrong

And something takes over in me, a calm in my voice
A clear head as my heart, which they can't detect,
Races into overdrive and I have to sit or I will fall.

I listen and hear my words as if they were spoken by someone else
Clear they are, and soft, and loving
I wonder how because they come from a man who feels
The pain of his child as his own pain
Yet the words don't betray that…not so far anyway.

These are the times they listen to me without the dismissal
Of the young for the generation above them.
This is when I am Dad, not "the old man"
I weigh more during these calls but I lose more of me to them.

But I don't miss what I have given
Any more than my mother missed what she gave me.