Rachel Eash-Scott considers God and parenthood, and shares two poems.

Poems Rachel shares this week:

On Children, by Khalil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Looking at them Asleep, by Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,

I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,

her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but

slightly pouted like one who hasn't had enough,

her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the

iris around to face the back of her head,

the eyeball marble-naked under that

thick satisfied desiring lid,

she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,

and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,

one knee up as if he is climbing

sharp stairs, up into the night,

and under his thin quivering eyelids you

know his eyes are wide open and

staring and glazed, the blue in them so

anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his

mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb

and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled

and pale, his fine fingers curved,

his hand open, and in the center of each hand

the dry dirty boyish palm

resting like a cookie. I look at him in his

quest, the thin muscles of his arms

passionate and tense, I look at her with her

face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,

content, content—and I know if I wake her she'll

smile and turn her face toward me though

half asleep and open her eyes and I

know if I wake him he'll jerk and say Don't and sit

up and stare about him in blue

unrecognition, oh my Lord how I

know these two. When love comes to me and says

What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.