besmilr brigham

Every now and then you stumble into a poem that gets it right. I mean the kind of poem that wants to "tell" something and manages to do that with deftness and quickness. The nice irony in Besmilr Brigham’s "Our Sons," from RUN THROUGH ROCK, ed. C.D. Wright (Lost Roads, 2000), is that what she wants to tell us is that maybe the best thing you can do in bringing up boys is teach them to find out things, as she says, "by watching." Don’t tell them anything, she tells us. Ignore, or at least start by ignoring, the old ways and conventions. Sweep the over-riding abstractions out of the way, and just look.

Our Sons

tell them
nothing
it is best to start with

not the value of money
obedience
or power
or what it is to be a man

let us
find out a few things
by watching

aren’t we
getting tired of reproducing

ourselves

it is best
to take the uninformed
approach
look at the rock
how firm it stands
yet when the rain
touches its sides
how the hidden colors
show

it is best we tell our sons nothing

[Blogger’s comment.] Not too many parents have tried this, I believe.