My father's shoulders

Sitting on my father’s shoulders,
Smiling oh so secretly,
Watching leaves curl up the roadside,
feeling the soothing southern breeze.

I felt content upon those shoulders,
I felt so safe, so confident,
For I was secure so sure of all things,
And that this was time so very well spent.

My father, was a man so rugged,
With crystal eyes he shone at me.
And he would smile then I would blossom,
though on his shoulders I would be.

Yet time is cold, its pathways hardened,
And age has left its bitter stain.
The man I knew has left me standing,
By an open dampened grave.

He left me, yet he’s with me still;
Those memories they never die;
I take them all and wrap them round me,
Even though they make me cry.

For myself I am a father,
And on my shoulders our daughter sits,
I hear her laugh with fruity candour;
Oh how I know just what she thinks.

For sitting on my father’s shoulders,
I thought that I could see the world,
That I could see more than he could wonder;
But, you see, what I know now, I did not know.

For it’s not the view that really matters,
It’s the person there that holds you up.
And as my father stopped me falling,
So I stop her falling just as much.

For we need each other on this journey,
We cannot view it on our own…
And the view we see, is shared in glory;
Held up by others…we’re not alone…

so when my father left me standing
looking down with crumpled love,
I felt him then upon my shoulders,
looking up with wondrous love...

for my dad.