This week’s poem is by HNN’s Poetry Editor Daniel Thomas Moran.

Daniel Thomas Moran served as Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York from 2005 to 2007. His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Forum, and the Poetry Salzburg Review. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Boston University’s School of Dental Medicine. His website is www.danielthomasmoran.net.

If you’d like to contribute original poetry to Humanist Voices in Verse, write to hnn@americanhumanist.org with “Poetry” in the subject line.

Please send no more than three poems for consideration per week.

To My Young Son

There was that day in October

In a room familiar to no one,

Where your entirety rested

On less than a forearm measure.

My palm a cradle, my fingers

Expressed like new petals

Around your bud of face.

Now you like to adorn yourself

In my shirts and shoes, that

Old leather jacket you found

in the deep of my closet.

You want to stand back to back.

I feel you slide against me

As you lift your heels and

Reach to meet my shoulders.

You cast your palm on mine

And say many hopeful things.

But I tell you to sleep well,

To reach up without fearing.

The day will be upon us soon

When I will need to raise up

my face to see into your eyes.

When I will need to be

Reassured by your shoulders.

Someday I will need to

Call out to you to come close

And make of your hands

A cradle for my head.

—Daniel Thomas Moran