First the things we remember—Grandma’s laugh
shaking a tablecloth, fixing blue eyes
on children next to steaming pies,
or Grandpa’s smothering hug, his rumbling cough
before a solemn speech, his ripsaw snore;
or lengthening hall light flooding the bedspread
as a door widened, a stooped shadow’s low
“Sweet Dreams,” shoes whishing past a closing door,
falling asleep beloved. Though now they’re dead,
thought keeps them living in an afterglow.
Then come the distant lives we only heard
their stories of: he drank and fought his mule
stalled in a plow-row, she taught school
during the Civil War—the day she stood
alone in a field and felt her husband’s cry
miles off the moment ropes snapped and a steer
trampled him dead—stern faces in dark frames
speak, briefly, in tales retold reverently,
yet each retelling vaguer—listener, teller,
confusing more details—dates, places, names.
Then we forget. Drowned in the river-rush
of new affairs, not a whisper survives–
the jostled talk of husbands, wives,
on westbound wagons; shout from swishing brush
beside a spring in virgin wilderness,
“Drink, now we’re home”; barn-raising prayers and song;
the teachings—what herbs mend a cut, what spells
make childbirth easy; how to weave a dress
from flax, find water with a willow prong,
the charm that eases heartache. Dying bells,
they go to silence, and we forfeit all
but one upwelling note, always the same,
a one-word legacy—a name
ours with our mother’s pangs, an unseen caul
we never slough—remembering a birthplace,
the stream a farmer lived by, or his kin,
his courage, hair shade, swagger, luck, goodness,
or meaningless, yet the blazon we re-trace
each signature; a cloak nearer than skin;
theirs, but through toil and passion forged in us.
That name ends, too, where my dull shovel blade
tosses to daylight a dull shard of chert
as mute as its surrounding dirt,
knapped, barbed, a flawless blade some hunter made,
thrown blindly at the future. Who can claim
the pride still in it? Where it juts from earth
I almost see him, crouched with sweat-dimmed eyes,
thumb pressed to flint, a man who has a name
crafting with skills his father taught from birth
a spear to give his son before he dies.
