This week’s poem, “The Father,” comes to us from a beautiful new book by a much beloved late Maine poet, Jonathan Aldrich. This poem has a luminous simplicity and grace. I love its speaker’s wise compassion as he sings of age, stories and the way to shore.

Aldrich wrote over a dozen books in his 40-year career as a poet. He was a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award and was a Frost Scholar at The Bread Loaf School of English. His translation of Charles Baudelaire’s “Le Voyage,” illustrated by Allison Hildreth and hand-printed by David Wolfe Productions, won a Baxter Society Award. Aldrich also taught English at several colleges, including for 25 years at the Maine College of Art, where he was recognized with a Best Teacher award. A major retrospective of his work, “The Old World in his Arms,” was just released by Wolfson Press at Indiana University.

 

The Father

By Jonathan Aldrich

 

Let me take you by the hand, old gentleman.

There may be a few stories we haven’t told

each other and the hour is late now.

Both of us are growing old

(and you are a good deal older than I am).

There is no other way

to the shore than by the trees.

It is better than you think to be blind.

Teller of tales, of beautiful long stories,

where are you going, and how?

Something still is asking us to find

my soul again, we have so much to say.

Quieter quieter here, it is a land of waters.

Let me take you by the hand.

 

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “The Father,” by Jonathan Aldrich, copyright © 2022 by Jonathan Aldrich, appears in “The Old World in His Arms,” published by Wolfson Press at Indiana University.

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