When I was a child I once sat writing
where Hemingway once wrote, at a table made of a canoe,
overlooking Turtle Bay, that little dip of Indian Ocean,
where my mother body-surfed the waves with us,
where my father spent some nervous scuba minutes
on the ocean floor, beneath a whale.
A lot has happened since then;
sometimes life is hard and sometimes
we don't know how to talk to each other.

What is a father? A Mother?  Child?
The answer is so different for so many.
Who are you?  I dream
I'm saying goodbye to you,
I don't know which of us is leaving
or where we're going but
I cry asleep and wake up crying;
and I remember there's been a few times
when there were tears in your eyes too.

And what is a Creator?  That infinite spiritual being
who fathers us, mothers us?  Acts 17 says
we are His offspring:
the children are hurting,
the children are crying,
the children are killing,
the children are dying and their dreams are dying.
But love still covers a multitude of sins.

Oh fathers of the world oh mothers
we do not say it often enough: thank you,
for what you could give, thank you,
for what you did give; and know
that I understand, finally,
that you were hurting too.

To the Creator, also, I say thank you
for fathering, mothering, even me.
We are Your offspring.
Deep down we're all dreaming the same kind of dream,
I haven't met a human yet who doesn't hurt about something;
we're all in this together if we let ourselves be

And love still covers a multitude of sins