My Hero

Date: 27 March 2006 12:49




My Hero


Now he wasn't huge or imposing in size,
As he trod the pathway of life,
But a giant he seemed when I was three,
As I walked along at his side,
Absorbing each utterance that came from his lips,
My dad was a hero to me.

He would tell me tales of days on the Banks,
Where the bitter winds rage and howl,
Or of great bull moose back of Fenton' s Ridge,
That came to the birch horn's call.
On the couch in the kitchen; telling me yarns,
My dad was a hero to me.

Learning to use a needle while mending a herring net,
Under his critical eye; learning to box the compass,
Only eleven years in age,  but steering an arrow straight course,
Many the things he taught me, has stood me all through life,
Whenever I met with a challenge, and things were bad as could be,
I'd remember the maxims he taught me and.........
My dad was a hero to me.

And when the time of parting came, ( and parting comes to us all )
He didn't wail and whimper, nor turn his face to the wall,
We talked of all the good times; of trips we had made to the camp,
And of the trip to Newfoundland, the trip that would never be,
Of the mornings he crouched in the North Point blind with old Rex by his side,
When I look on his stone where he rests on the hill near the place where he was born,
I think of the kind of a man he was;.........And he's still a hero to me. !

DGC