My father’s gift

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My father did not have a pen,
he had a sledge-hammers
and an enormous furnace
and a dark blue shirt
that smelled of soap
when he put it on in the early morning
and smelled of hard work
when he took it off in the evening.

For my Bat Mitzvah he gave me a pen.
It was an old-fashioned pen,
just as he had wanted for his own Bar Mitzvah.
But instead, his parents gave him his first dark blue shirt
and told him that when he was older
he would have to buy his own pen.

My father’s favourite moment
was when he gave each daughter
a beautiful pen at her Bat Mitzvah.

Now we are grown up and he is old,
we write poems of praise to him
and though we all have computers now,
we send him letters of love with these pens
and put them in beautiful envelopes
writing his name and our old home address
with beautifully formed letters.

My father does not wear his blue shirt any more,
and is often at his own computer now.
But whenever he gets one of our letters
he caresses it, smudging the ink slightly,
which makes him smile.

My father’s gifts to us were pens.
Now we write poems about his love for our mother,
about his devotion to his daughters
and about his blue shirt
that smelled of soap in the morning
and of hard work when he hugged us
on his return home after work.