One Day I Will Take My Daughter To DC

One day,

I will take my daughter to The Lincoln Memorial,

look at her and say:

“Here sits a great one. That can be you some day.”

She will look up at my face,

Holding onto Dad’s hand.

Knowing none of the world’s evil,

She will not understand.

I know one day she will,

She’ll have to, you see.

When she thinks of a great one

For now she thinks of me.

Then we will walk to Vietnam, stand beneath it’s black wall.

“This is what it means to serve, to truly give all.”

She’ll try to read names,

Of heroes who have passed.

“I know James,

he’s a friend in my class.”

That innocent remark

will slice through my soul.

All the things, dear

One day you will know.

A small and warm mitten.

Her hand wrapped in mine.

She laughs at a bird.

She looks to the sky.

There’s joy and there’s laughter

She finds through the cold.

She thinks life is easy,

She has not been told.

Here is the Jefferson Memorial.

The rotunda, she will like the shape.

She will study the man in the middle,

How his jacket resembles a cape.

“Your grandfather, he proposed here,

told a woman he loved her.

Told her that she would be all his

And he’d never need any another.”

She will know what love is,

She will understand.

“Daddy, is that a book he has in his hand?”

The world is big and she is so little.

The wind is cold and her face is pale.

The world is hard and life is beautiful.

She is weak and innocent and frail.

She will ask to sit on my shoulders.

I will slowly lift her up.

In years, there will come a day

I will not be strong enough.

Here is the Washington Monument.

Here is the National Mall.

Yes, it does look like a pencil.

It stands so great and so tall.

What does it mean to be a great man?

Will I ever have what it takes?

Will I always be here to catch her?

To pick up her heart when it breaks?

“In that White House lives the President,

The one who guides us to what to do,

The one who has power of nations,

The one who we hope will be true.”

And I know what is coming from her now,

A thought that she cannot subdue.

She will look at me with innocent eyes:

“Daddy I thought that was you?”

“Daddy, why are you crying?” She’ll ask.

“Daddy, what did I say?”

I will take my daughter to The Lincoln Memorial one day.