The Secret Heart

I want to share my new favorite poem with you.   It's the perfect Valentine gift, I think.  What parent hasn't looked in on a sleeping child and found their heart melting with love for their dreaming little one?  This poem captures the memory a grown man has of waking up as a child and seeing the unspeakable look of love on his Daddy's face and a secret heart in his hands:

The Secret Heart

by Robert P. Tristram Coffom

Across the years he could recall

His father one way best of all.

In the stillest hour of night

The boy awakened to a light.
Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.
He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.
He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one.
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.
It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.
But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.


Happy Valentine's Day!