Our Fathers, Once Gods, No Longer...Villanelle Poem by John Tansey

Life was holier then when younger,
opened gifts at Christmas, I toyed
beside the shelter of my father.

Faith in the world was stronger
when what little I knew, relied
upon the lies he told me when younger,

For as the hand of God, come under
a cloud to part the sea for a boy,
I walked proudly through the crowds with my father.

But now, his iconic loom no longer
fends, like prometheus, the plight
of man from one no longer younger.

For I see in the winter of his growing older,
this frail mortal of him, that destroys
the hope I would hold his hand forever.

Empty by fact of having grown colder,
Christmas goes quietly without the joy
so omnipresent when I was younger-
and still knew God by the shape of my father.