I Know A Man

I know a man who has a daughter. She is a woman-child, grown but unready. She is beautiful and bright, a father’s dream. It is an unsteady relationship. His father abandoned him and for a time her father abandoned her. He tries his best to do right. Raw, she struggles to set her own course but runs aground again and again.

Well into middle years the father struggled to steer. He sought a sure current but his battered, tattered sails tore in the blow. Time and again he altered course but still the storm held. He sailed into the swirl, spilled and only just broke the surface. He learned to work the oars, to steer, to tack.

The woman-child now suffers. The roar of the past permeates/envelops at every point. She is blind to the storm approaching and sails an erratic course, seeking a safe harbor but finding only choppy water and more rocky shores.  No anchor, no calm, no still.

From his safe moorings he watches her struggle to trim the sail but again and again the ropes foul. He longs to pilot as she is no hand at the tiller.

His cries to her to take to the oars, to save herself as he cannot. Too late. The child plunges unprepared into the maelstrom. He prays please right yourself, navigate the gale.  Too late.

I know a man. He has a daughter. She is lost.

I know a man. He lost a daughter.

He is lost.