Find popular poems to share with Dad on Father’s Day, as well as poems about fatherhood, about complicated relationships with parents, and about grieving a father who has passed away.
“This is the line that for him I pen: / Only a dad, but the best of men,” writes Edgar Guest at the end of his poem “Only a Dad,” in which a father silently and lovingly works, toils, and strives for more for his family—something that the speaker acknowledges with gratitude and admiration for the man who asks for no thanks.
Featured Poems
“Afternoons / Tardes” by Jorge H. Aigla
Those afternoons, the Saturdays of my tender childhood…
“To Her Father with Some Verses” by Anne Bradstreet
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear…
“my father moved through dooms of love” by E. E. Cummings
my father moved through dooms of love…
“Only a Dad” by Edgar Guest
Only a dad with a tired face…
“My Father. A Tree.” by Tina Chang
Today, longing for my father, ...
“A Boy and His Dad” by Edgar Guest
A boy and his dad on a fishing trip…
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early…
“Descriptions of Heaven and Hell” by Mark Jarman
The wave breaks / And I’m carried into it…
“My Father’s Kites” by Allison Joseph
were crude assemblages of paper sacks and twine…
“The Gift” by Li-Young Lee
To pull the metal splinter from my palm...
“A Taste of Blue” by Cynthia Manick
I tell my father about the way…
“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye
A man crosses the street in rain…
“Whose Mouth Do I Speak With” by Suzanne Rancourt
I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum…
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath...
“My Father” by Francisco X. Alarcón, translated by Francisco Aragón
my father...