We Named Him Wren

A Poem About Fatherhood and Inherited Traits

We Named Him Wren

In a world of sharp elbows,
and confused masculinity,
modernity glows
in artificial, pixelated hues.

Short, short, shorts.
Attention spans collapse.
Ice shelves collapse.
Boys collapse.

We.
All.
Fall.
Down.

We named you Wren,
small-bodied, sharp-eyed,
a creature of restless song.

The belly-up, belly-full bird,
calling loud,
perched and quivering,
bobbing up and down, down and up.

We named you Wren.
Not a burden, but a call to arms.

The King of Birds, the trickster,
not nearly as strong as the eagle,
but wiser by far.
Our homely boy, buried headfirst

under your mother’s wing.
Comforted by safety
you flew highest of all.

Male wrens build their nests,
half-formed, waiting
for their mate
to add final touches
to call it a place of their own.

Patient as you are,
your sister does the rest.
You are precise.
She is not.
Your softness, a wonder.

We named you Wren.
And for such a small bird,
what a noise;
loud and insistent,
your song fills the air.

When we found out we were having a son,
an estranged aunt warned,

Oh, the men in our family—

they don’t father their sons well..

As if I would flee the nest,
as if the weight of inheritance
was my cross to bear.
That was her family, not mine.

Years later, in the summer of renewal
I drove to the shoreline,

you in tow. Your mother
playing with spirits in the forest.
Under a giving tree, she meditated.
While we skimmed flat rocks across the sea.
1—2—3—4—5–6-789.

The tears, they flowed.
Remembering the truth
of the fragile boy,
with all the hate I carried.

To forgive myself.
To forgive him.
To forgive.

When we connect,
we don’t soar,
we skitter low, wings tucked,
bouncing proudly across the ground,
like your namesake,
flitting beneath Japanese maples,
pecking at fallen seeds,
dancing around squirrels, gathering leaves.

We serenade each other
in ways only we understand
and in ways we don’t,
or likely ever will.

We named you Wren, my son,
my love, my boy.

My failings live through you,
my triumphs, my joy.

In the silence between us,
where words often fail,
this love persists.

I built you this nest,
left it half untidy,
for you to make it your own.

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