Giants

Note:  My father-in-law, Don Warm, passed away (So, yes, let’s wander off on a tangent for a moment here and address an annoying, albeit trivial, subject:  People do not merely “pass”; they pass away.  After all, how many people who die have been seen or heard from since?  The expression “pass away” is one hundred percent correct and appropriate.  If you insist on using only the word “pass”, you could just as easily be referring to bowel gas) a year ago, on October 19th, 2017.  He was undeniably a great man.  As his erstwhile son-in-law, I can truthfully offer Don the greatest compliment that could ever be passed along to a father-in-law:  He treated me exactly as he would a son.  The following poem is a personal tribute to him and is borrowed from an anthology of poetry entitled “The Changing Seasons of Life”, which was organized and published in 2017 by me.

 

Giants

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

Giants aren’t all eight feet tall while boasting biceps larger than ripe watermelons

And giants don’t necessarily tower over everyone around them in physical stature

Giants don’t sing their praises incessantly and beg everlastingly for attention and adulation

No, giants can be reserved, unassuming, and of normal size and organic composition

Don Warm was a true giant.

 

Giants don’t have to be larger than life and impose their will on everyone they come in contact with

And giants don’t always have to set out to create legends and to carve their names indelibly in the annals of history

Giants don’t have to stand out from the crowd with loud, obnoxious, garrulous behavior

No, giants can oftentimes compensate for their physical averageness with intellectual or creative genius

Don Warm was a true giant among men.

 

Giants don’t feel an obsessive need to prove their gigantism every second of every day

And giants aren’t invariably the obvious solution to every problem that arises

Giants aren’t fashioned from blocks of granite and thereafter immune from the slings and arrows of mere mortals

No, giants can bedazzle with their industry, their resourcefulness, and their astonishing problem-solving skills

Don Warm was a true giant among his myriad contemporaries. 

 

Giants aren’t always found as the featured protagonists in ancient myths and storybook fairy tales

And giants don’t have to unfailingly rescue drowning children or damsels in distress in order to validate their invincibility

Giants aren’t molded from cosmic super dust and ethereally pre-destined for greatness

No, giants can be normal people, lead normal lives, perform non-heroic deeds….but nonetheless leave an extraordinarily favorable imprint upon those fortunate people who happen to cross their paths

Don Warm—a smallish, bespectacled, uber-humble father of two unobtrusively hidden away in the far-off reaches of northeastern Minnesota for the overwhelming majority of his adult life–was a true giant standing tall and proud amongst a thriving, albeit perpetually quarreling and squawking, colony of big-talking pygmies.

 

Yes, with nary a doubt or even a reservation, Don Warm was every bit a giant and cut from the same transcendent cloth as any biblical or mythological figure who was ever conceived or imagined.