Threads of life;
running, shouting, falling, bouncing,
loving, neverstopping life!
Our kids are as fully alive
as dirt and scratch and love can make them be!

Each partial answer that we give
may God augment
to their smallest query, wary
of unknowing darker bent.
Would that we were heaven sent!
Leaven for their merriment!
Mortar for their heart's content!

They are, when nothing else can be,
full reason to see
the next day's sun;
enough almost to know each day we've lost
a day they've won.
Rumpled hair above an unlined face,
unreserved smile-Lord what daily grace!

Copyright 2001 Phil Hodgkins
Background courtesy of Gracie Hanks