The Wayfaring Way

for my children on Father's Day

The best part of the wayfaring way
That discarnate portability
Which belongs to a wandering mind
Is what grants one the facility
Whether at midnight or at noonday
To transcend and to leave all behind
Even without going anywhere

This is that joyful ability
Of the free to be not here nor there
But as vagabond to live beyond
Limitation and live everywhere
On a minimum of calories
But maximum curiosity
Vaccinated against the disease
Of that need for control which enslaves
Beyond want and its obesities

To be neither needy nor greedy
Day or night and dark or light the same
One who knows how to bob and to weave
An artful dodger smooth and speedy
Who can find the pattern in the game
Knowing when and when not to believe
How to flow like water my daughter

A wayfaring soul is one who saves
The world my son: may you be one of these

+Steven Curtis Lance



All my love to Maria, Stevie, and Teddy, today and always.

Copyright MMVI

a beautiful, fine poem. sometimes, on these more marked occasions, you write poetry with such an impact as to take the very air that we breathe and leave us trying to hold the tears. then they come and the breath returns.

My dear friend, thank you with all my heart.

My children know that I am a wayfarer, and, since they manifestly are wayfarers too, I thought this might be good to give them today on this day when most think about fathers, but when I think about the children who create the fathers.

Uncle Jack always said I was a parasite; he was too stupid to know the Nick Drake song, but that is what he called me. The parasite has reproduced three times: living well is the best revenge, and laughing last is always laughing best.

Happy Father's Day to children of all ages everywhere, and to you, who are both child and father simultaneously, like me.

Love,

+Stevie