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DEAR ANCESTOR
Your tombstone stands among
the rest;
Neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out
On polished, marbled stone.
It reaches out
to all who care
It is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist
You died and I was born.
Yet each of
us are cells of you
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse
Entirely not our own.
Dear
Ancestor, the place you filled
One hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left
Who would have loved
you so.
I wonder if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot,
And come
to visit you.
Unknow Author.
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STRANGERS IN THE BOX
Come, look with me inside this drawer,
In this box I've often seen,
At
the pictures, black and white,
Faces proud, still, serene.
I wish I knew the people,
These strangers in the box,
Their
names and all their memories
Are lost among my socks.
I wonder what their lives were like,
How did they spend their
days?
What about their special times?
I'll never know their ways.
If only someone had taken time
To tell who,
what, where, or when,
These faces of my heritage
Would come to life again.
Could this become the fate
Of the pictures
we take today?
The faces and the memories
Someday to be passed away?
Make time to save your stories,
Seize the
opportunity when it knocks,
Or someday you and yours could be
The strangers in the box.
© 1997 by Pamela A. Harazim. All Rights Reserved.
May be
used in unchanged form for non-commercial purposes if accompanied by this copyright message.
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GRANDMA CLIMBED THE FAMILY TREE
There’s been a change
in Grandma, we’ve noticed as of late
She’s always reading history, or jotting down some date.
She’s
tracing back the family, we’ll all have pedigrees,
Grandma’s got a hobby, she’s Climbing Family Trees
Poor
Grandpa does the cooking, and now, or so he states,
he even has to wash the cups and the dinner plates.
Well, Grandma
can’t be bothered, she’s busy as a bee,
Compiling genealogy for the Family Tree.
She has not time to
baby-sit, the curtains are a fright.
No buttons left on Grandpa’s shirt, the flower bed’s a sight.
She’s
given up her club work, the serials on TV,
The only thing she does nowdays is climb the Family Tree.
The mail is
all for Grandma, it comes from near and far.
Last week she got the proof she needs to join the DAR.
A monumental project
- to that we all agree,
A worthwhile avocation - to climb the Family Tree.
There were pioneers and patriots mixed
with our kith and kin,
Who blazed the paths of wilderness and fought through thick and thin.
But none more staunch than
Grandma, whose eyes light up with glee,
Each time she finds a missing branch for the Family Tree.
To some it’s
just a hobby, to Grandma it’s much more.
She learns the joys and heartaches of those who went before.
They loved,
they lost, they laughed, they wept -- and now for you and me,
They live again in spirit around the Family Tree.
At
last she’s nearly finished, and we are each exposed.
Life will be the same again, this we all suppose.
Grandma
will cook and sew, serve crullers with our tea.
We’ll have her back, just as before that wretched Family Tree.
© by Virginia Day McDonald. All Rights Reserved. |
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