Bridges (A Father's Day Poem)

Bridges is a reflective poem about the sometimes-complicated relationship between fathers and sons. By listening to this poem and reflecting on your own father-child relationship, you may find solace in accepting the relationship, as well as cultivating more understanding and compassion for the other person.

Transcript

Bridges I looked back far behind me at the bridge I walked along.

It's not an image of a storybook bridge reclined into a brook-fed flowerbed sat overlooking some singsong meadow ridge.

It's a hand-built wooden path,

Patched with builder's scraps,

Stacked onto stilts that are half-attached and surrounded by sand and asphalt and wilted grass.

It's a bridge I built,

But not by myself.

It's only standing because of friends and family who helped lay planks or added paint along the way.

My father described his own bridge,

Built by a disowned kid who grew up in an orphanage.

Built over rough waters,

His crossing was harder,

So he built his bridge longer,

Creating distance from his father.

Because bridges between generations of fathers and their sons maintain,

At once,

Connection as well as separation from.

And from here I look back to the extended bridge behind me,

And I finally understand that.

The bridges between generations of fathers and their sons are built to keep connection as well as separation from.

Bridges Written by Lance McNeill Narrated by Carl Sjoberg