Friend to Dragons

A poem for heroes

I’ve got a couple of love poems teed up to share these next two weeks. ’Tis the season, after all. Today’s was written for my son and next week I’ve got a Valentine specific poem I wrote for my daughter. I don’t think they are too over the top, but they are love poems.

Mary Roblyn

and I have chatted in the comments about our fervent wish to avoid sentimentality when writing about emotional matters. I have a strict no schmaltz policy when it comes to poetry. I hope I haven’t colored too far outside the line with these.

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There was a lot of chat here last week about patriarchy and how it’s as bad for men as it is for women. Many thanks, as always, to

15thCenturyFeminist

for helping with context and history, and for lifting up important voices and perspectives. She pointed me in the direction of

Joshua P. Hill

’s It’s Expensive to Be a Man, and

Jeremy Mohler

’s I’m Lonely and I’m Scared to Talk About It. Thanks to both these writers, as well as to

Marc Typo

and the letters he writes to his son that nudged me to write one to mine, albeit in the form of a poem.

We tried to hard to raise both our kids to be thoughtful humans, resilient, and kind, and to help them build a sense of self that was, if not unassailable, at least equipped to withstand the slings and arrows of adolescence, with all its image consciousness, body shaming, and harmful gender stereotypes.

Of course, you know there’s no real, practical way to shield kids from this darker side of growing up. I knew that, too. But it didn’t stop me from grieving their struggles. And I was so naive at first about how this stuff plays out for boys.

Women are so conditioned to want to be smaller than we are that it took me too long to realize that boys are pressured just as much to be bigger. I confess, I looked at my slender son and thought him fortunate. At first I didn’t see how he and his friends were constantly fed images of muscle-bound super heroes whose physiques were as impossible for mere mortals to attain as were those of the airbrushed super models of my youth. I got there eventually, but I wish I’d seen his side of things sooner.

Then there’s the cultural side of things that tells men to be strong in all things, to hide their hurts, their emotions, their vulnerability. It’s insidious, just like the voice that convinces women that they should tend to mens’ feelings and egos before their own, that they are “natural” caregivers.

I watched my kids, one boy and one girl, merrily disregard these stereotypes as young children and dance back and forth across the entirely imaginary and false boundary between what belongs to boys and what belongs to girls. They were simply themselves, striving, competing, nurturing, and creating. And I watched in fury as the world kept butting in to correct them.

I have felt so grateful for the stories we read together as a family, filled with characters who broke the molds and still succeeded. I owe Rick Riordan an un-payable debt for Percy, Annabeth, Leo, Hazel, and all the rest. These books and so many others fed his imagination with possibilities. They showed him bad-ass girls, and boys who loved the natural world. They told him it was okay to be himself, whoever that turned out to be. That there is more than one way to be a hero. I feel like these authors were our co-parents, and I am so grateful for them.

The poem that follows came swirling out of all of this. But mostly it was born of the wonder of watching my boy struggle, watching him seek and find his way, and watching him grow to be a kind, responsible, loving man.

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Friend to Dragons

As a child, you saw dragons
out your bedroom window.
Their white pine silhouettes 
tall above the houses.
Stretched on your bed as the sun
set, your chin propped 
on your hands, you watched them 
bow their heads
and curl their tails.
They were your friends, 
your protectors, and when
the tornado came, a shrieking,
wailing monster of myth, it tore
down all those pines, all your
dragons, and you wept
night after night 
to see them gone.

Then one day, perhaps 
a week later, the wide 
blue sky filled with clouds,
wisps and waves,
colossal towers,
twisted by wind and
patterned with scales,
and you came to my side, 
motioned for me to bend close 
and whispered, Mama,
I know what happened 
to the dragons. The wind 
didn’t kill them, it set them free.

You are grown now,
your body nearly as big
as your heart and your mind.
I know you still see things
that others cannot.
You see how things work,
how they move, 
how they fit together, 
and how they break.
It is your super power.

And to the world that would dare
to tell you, young hero, what it is
to be a man, you owe nothing.
Because you were always 
the one who was brave enough
to see dragons when no one else
could, gentle enough to grieve
for them, and strong enough 
to set them free.

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Incidentally, if there are any Percy Jackson fans out there who haven’t seen the new Disney series based on the first book, it is most definitely worth your time. I loved everything about it. It made me want to go back and start reading the whole series over again.

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What I’m Reading:

• I’m about to dive into The Midcoast, by Adam White. Really looking forward to this one.

Normally I’d be plowing through a few poetry collections, too. But a chunk of my time has been used responding to prompts for the February Poetry Adventure. That is not a complaint! Just an explanation for why I don’t have a poet to recommend to you this week. And since we’re on the subject, we’ve got three more weeks of poems to write and you can jump in whenever you want. The water’s lovely!

Here on Substack:

• In addition to the pieces I mentioned above, I have to share with you this post by novelist Tom Cox chronicling the nutty, wise, and wacky things his father has said over the years. It’s not just laugh-out-loud funny, it’s snort, cackle, and hoot funny. Really. Don’t miss it.

Some Notes About My Dad That I Have Made In My Notebooks

Thanks for reading, Everyone!