fencesitter
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Parent of person with diabetes
I was talking to my godmother last night about how hard it is to deal with 'letting go' of our children, perhaps especially so when they have a long term condition like diabetes to manage. Anyway, she pointed me towards a poem by Cecil Day Lewis called 'Walking Away' that I liked so much I thought I'd share it on here (dabs eyes with hanky) 😱
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day ?
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled ? since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature?s give-and-take ? the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one?s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show ?
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day ?
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled ? since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature?s give-and-take ? the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one?s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show ?
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
