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O! FOR THE CHILDREN, KAHLIL

“Your children are not your children. They are
the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”
Kahlil Gibran

O! Kahlil, you have shown the way
If we would but trace your shadow!

Let us carefully propel our children
Toward the seed of humankind,
We are merely the bow
From which they must take wing,
They are the blazing arrows
Of this globe’s ensuing design.

We must learn to permit our children
To craft their own shape and desire.
We may only point them toward the path
Of kindness and knowledge,
For their truth and chosen course
Were forged long before we imagined them.

Give to them of your knowledge
But do not expect them take it,
For they were born with their own splendor
Cuddled up at their feet,
They are made of flesh and bone
Not of an artist’s clay shaped by human hand.

We must tell our children of our own roads,
But let the one they brightly travel
Be of their life’s choosing.
We have set them toward the path
And gracefully propelled them,
It is now theirs to bestow upon it life’s breath.