Is it wrong to wonder if Yeats or James
Would ever have soared to single names
Without some thrust from the rocket packs
Affixed by fortune to their backs?
Their fathers, I mean. Both breeds apart:
One an acolyte of art,
One of language lashed to thought—
Their sons among the works they wrought.
Maybe if I’d been dealt a dad
A tenth the size of those they had…
As if I wouldn’t have settled for
A dwarf with an interior,
My father having as good as none
For all he let me into one….
That’s not to say he’d never hug
A tyke he termed a doodlebug.
To think those scraps of such a love
Were somehow sustenance enough.