Family History

Family History
Carol Brockfield

My Uncle Robert (said my dad),
now he was somethin’!
He knew words, could
convince you of anything.
Helped me with that prize I won
in the fourth grade.
To tell the truth, he pretty much
wrote the whole thing.

He had a phonograph with a big horn.
Used to sit out on his porch,
play it so loud
you could hear it all up and down the street.
All the pretty girls would listen
at their open windows.
They’d been just waitin’ for him to come out
with his record machine.

Uncle Robert was an inventor, too.
Had a workin’radio
and a telescope for seein’ stars.
He’d invite the neighbors to take a look
and he always told the women:
‘You have to lie down in the grass with me.
That’s how it’s done.’

He got some takers, too.

***

Carol Brockfield has been doing family research for almost fifty years now, way before the internet brought us armchair genealogy.

She is the current chair of the Rogue Valley Chapter of the Oregon State Poetry Association, and her poems have been published in The Hiss Quarterly, The Cimarron Review, Women Writers, flashquake, Quite Curious, Verseweavers, and Napa Valley College anthologies. A former New Yorker and Californian, she now lives in Southern Oregon.