You can give them your love but not your thoughts
No, they have their own thoughts.
You can house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls live in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in you dreams.

You can strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them just 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 also loves the bow that remains.

My friend Ellen sent me a CD with the track “On Children” from the black vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock some years ago. The lyrics were a modified version of the first three stanzas of Gibran’s poem. Upon listening to it I typed up the lyrics and sent them off to my friends, who all loved them. Later that year I read Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and found the rest of the poem. These stanzas pertain more to parents than to children, and the first three resonate more with me than the others.

The thing that struck me most about these words was that they had been written by an adult. Here were five middle-aged women singing these words as if it were the most natural thing in the world! Sweet Honey albums are full of songs speaking out against racism and sexism, but it still surprised me to hear them declaring the rights of children.

Those words were exactly what I needed to hear at the time. I lay on the bed and imagined my mind spinning out into space, free of my body, house, family, and restrictions. In the future I would be like a bird winging away, finally free from earth. As soon as I was out of college I would move to New England and live in a white farmhouse with my three best friends. It would be cold but we would have quilts and be blissfully happy. There was nothing really wrong with my life and I never could put my finger on what it was that I wanted to badly to get away from, but every morning I felt still more trapped. I dreamed of candle flames and twilight in the Catskills.

Someday when I have children I will write this poem out on beautiful paper with a calligraphy pen and hang it on my wall. I wonder if the meaning of the words will be diminished for my children because their mother put them there? Will they think me a hypocrite? For me the words were made more powerful by their adult speakers, just as a white speaking against racism has more impact than a black would. But I’m sure that I would have distrusted both Gibran and his work had my parents introduced me to them. Still, I hope that they will forgive their doddering mother and feel their souls take wing as mine did.