A Bit of Paternity

 Time for a poem. 
   Here is one by the always excellent Dick Davis, about a situation every parent – and grandparent – will be familiar with: the awful helplessness we feel in the presence of a child inconsolably, unreachably upset or hurt...

A Bit of Paternity

To tell your weeping child,
'This too will pass, believe
Me, I've been here before'

Is to be one who walks
Communing with himself
Along a wintry shore

And thinks his murmured thoughts
Might calm the crashing waves,
The wind's inhuman roar.