Three Women

Three Women
SuzAnne C. Cole

I. Christina Sophia Hoelzel Groskinsky 1849- 1937

As September sun ripened grain,
barns brimful with ample harvest,
Great-Grandmother's house emptied.
Four brief lives--ten, eight, six, and two--
buried green before their goldenness.
Battered so, she stayed on
for husband and remaining son;
not only lived but leapt into the abyss
of creation twice more and flew--
another boy, then Carrie, miracle
to mother forty-three, father, fifty-nine.
When this cherished child of her bosom
quieted forever when only eight,
Christina endured like limestone,
dark velvet cloaking shards of a heart
never again trusting life or love.

II. Rose Elizian Bunnell Ripley 1865 - 1958

Gram, married at seventeen,
mother of five, practical nurse,
outlived husband, son, and siblings.
Kept her own house until betrayed
at ninety by brittle bones.
Life narrowing to borrowed room,
living on malted-milk tablets,
quietly she withered, as sweetly
fading as the fragrance of her flower.

III. Mary Edna Ripley Groskinsky 1889 - 1988

Gangrenous leg amputated at ninety-eight,
still she struggled against the dark angel,
declaring herself too wicked to die.
There, there murmured the family,
petting away the nightmares,
remembering the woman who
wrestled laundry in a wringer washer,
canned beans and preserved fruit in
steam-filled summer kitchen,
brought light, flickering kerosene
illuminating endless darning.
Maybe someone should have asked,
Why do you think yourself so wicked?
Struggle between faith of her mothers
and dogma of daughter so tenderly caring,
grateful when the screaming stopped.

***

SuzAnne C. Cole, former college English instructor, enjoys being a wife, mother, and grandmother, traveling, hiking, and writing from a studio in the Texas Hill Country. She’s been both a juried and featured poet at the Houston Poetry Fest and once won a haiku contest in Japan. She’s also published essays, short fiction, meditations, and plays.

Visit to Grandmother's House

Visit to Grandmother’s House
Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Sprawled on grandma’s bed
across the quilt her grandmother made,
the little ones nap after an August lunch.
Cheeks flushed, eyelashes shadowy
as spider threads on silk,
their thumbs creep to rosy lips
pursed, already sucking.
The angels-unaware haven’t yet learned
they are the fifth generation to race
screaming with joy in the back yard
crammed with roses and apple trees.
After their naps they play
on the flagstone patio
under conversation of uncles and aunts.
They will only realize when much older
that the grandma who makes up
silly stories and sings in her funny
cracked voice played on these same
garden paths while visiting her grandmother.
The grown-ups, sipping cold drinks
and mopping up little-finger spills,
watch time speed in the sturdy bodies
of the babies.

Visit to Grandmother's House was originally published in Above Ground Testing, 2005

***

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is widely published with an interest in healing writing and the benefits of writing and reading work together. Twenty years ago she got fired up about genealogy and wound up researching, writing and publishing five family histories.

John and Sarah Bumpus, 1692

John and Sarah Bumpus, 1692
Lucille Lang Day

When the witch trials started up north
in Salem, Sarah was already heavy
with Jeremiah, their ninth child.
John thought back to when he was whipped
for idleness and flirtation as a young man
and shuddered, thinking how much
worse the allegation might have been.

Now even Governor Phips's wife
and shipmaster John Alden, son of John
and Priscilla, stood accused. Would
it never end? The Andover witches
all offered the same account: the devil
was a small black man who made them
renounce their baptism and sign his book.

Sarah hoped to God no witches would
ever be found in Plymouth. The baby
was due in August, the time to cut
wheat and rye. Had it been a mistake
for the Old Colony to join Massachusetts,
where the witches flew and cried? She
wondered, throwing corn to dappled swine.

John and Sarah Bumpus, 1692 was previously published in Blue Unicorn.

***

Lucille Lang Day is the author of eight poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently The Curvature of Blue (Cervena Barva, 2009). She has also published a children’s book, Chain Letter, and her memoir, Married at Fourteen, will appear from Heyday in 2012. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in such magazines and anthologies as Atlanta Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and New Poets of the American West (Many Voices, 2010). She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, writer Richard Levine. Her website is http://lucillelangday.com.

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.

The Strength of Roots

The Strength of Roots
Patricia Wellingham-Jones

A forgotten graveyard, tumbled
remnants of a pioneer's home,
the white flaking fence and crumbled rails
long overruled by brambles and vines.

Great and grand parents are here,
chiseled in stone, their small blocks
in cool grass beckon sit and rest awhile.
Not, we hope, forever.

We find the site, once discovered,
lost again, an infant's final resting place
tenderly tucked in the roots of an oak, marked now
by acorns and a tangle of thicket, while

in town by the brick church
and colonial pilasters, exterior aisles
of well-trimmed boxwood, hovering yews, a marble
sarcophagus rules the rolling green.

My cousin and I tiptoe around the
cold box, trace with warm fingers
the weathered inscriptions, try to
understand what somebody said about
our obviously honored ancestor,

imagine him (with his barely mentioned wife)
in snug leggings and waistcoat, cradling the baby
who lies under the oak, siring all those others
who, two hundred years later, became
my cousin and me.

The Strength of Roots was previously published in The Lucid Stone, 1997.

***

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is widely published with an interest in healing writing and the benefits of writing and reading work together. Twenty years ago she got fired up about genealogy and wound up researching, writing and publishing five family histories.

Family Photo

Family Photo
Anthony A. Lee


Stern white hair, walrus
mustache—three piece suit
that might be in style now
if you don’t follow fashion—
hands in lap, on studio chair
in Sunday best. “He’s not
related to us,” my mother said.

His wife’s standing—
mother’s mother’s grandmother
and my great, great—
with her fourth man
(no one knows what
happened to 1, 2, and 3).
She, gold spectacles (no smile),
starched blouse (no lace),
sleeves long to wrists (big cuffs),
cameo at her throat,
skirt dark to the floor,
gray hair bundled, tied back,
arm on his shoulder,
black, black skin,
not a wrinkle in sight,
her Indian blood (Cherokee, Ozark)
holding her up—though she
must be seventy.

This Kansas woman
is as far back as my family
can go. She stands well
(photo faded, 1890 maybe)
unbending, no slave crouch,
looks straight, straight
on great grandsons,
and great, great, greats,
with no shame.

My mother bragged
about her prairie store,
horses and surrey,
the cash in her drawers,
had a copy of her will
with our cut right
there in black and white
($500 was a lot of money in those days),
stolen away by no good cousins
before the funeral day.
No. 4 has no name, but
“Elizabeth Taylor Milton”
she belongs to us.

They stare out, unmoved,
wait for the camera to finish.
I stare back,
search for clues
stare at the shadows.

***

Anthony A. Lee, Ph.D. teaches African American history at UCLA. He is the winner of the Nat Turner Poetry Prize for 2003 (Cross Keys Press). His first book of poems, This Poem Means, was the winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for 2005 (Lotus Press). Some of his translations have been published in Táhirih: A Portrait in Poetry: Selected Poems of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Kalimát Press, 2004). He teaches a poetry workshop sponsored by the Creative Arts Center, City of Manhattan Beach, Califonria.

He's Taken Out His Papers - Edgar Guest

He's Taken Out His Papers (1921)
Edgar Guest (1881-1959)

He's taken out his papers, an' he's just like you an' me.
He's sworn to love the Stars and Stripes an' die for it, says he.
An' he's done with dukes an' princes, an' he's done with kings an' queens,
An' he's pledged himself to freedom, for he knows what freedom means.

He's bought himself a bit of ground, an', Lord, he's proud an' glad!
For in the land he came from that is what he never had.
Now his kids can beat his writin', an' they're readin' books, says he,
That the children in his country never get a chance to see.

He's taken out his papers, an' he's prouder than a king:
"It means a lot to me," says he, "just like the breath o' spring,
For a new life lies before us; we've got hope an' faith an' cheer;
We can face the future bravely, an' our kids don't need to fear."

He's taken out his papers, an' his step is light to-day,
For a load is off his shoulders an' he treads an easier way;
An' he'll tell you, if you ask him, so that you can understand,
Just what freedom means to people who have known some other land.

Note: This poem may be semi-autobiographical.  Edgar Guest was born in England, in 1881, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1902.

Viking Grave

Viking Grave
Charles Carr

Languages barter for directions.
Until the tines of a rake clear lines in the gravel,
extracting a map from here to the Stone ages.

Seated on the crest of a barley field, a dolman.
8 split stones knee deep in soil. Inward,
backs bent like pall bearers, suspending monoliths above the underworld.
I see the two of us in procession, wading through the green.
The soil cracking with thirst underfoot.
Divining hearts probe the source and reason for us.

We climb to sit touching
our masks wrapped in black, grey and gold.
Gazing at the boundless, shivering stone.

Memories whispering:
Goddess of sight
create light and darkness. Paint the swerving verticals and horizontals.

Oracle of sounds.
Purse your lips and tongue against a lur,
marshal truth, frighten lies. Protect us from mere mortals.

***

Charles Carr is a native Philadelphian, born and raised in Southwest Germantown. Charles attended LaSalle College and Bryn Mawr College, and has a Master's degree in American History. For 35 years Charles has worked in social services, developing programs and advocating for the needs of abused and neglected children. Charles has also completed missions to Haiti and he is active in raising awareness and funds for Haiti. In 2009 Cradle Press of St. Louis published Charles's first book of poetry: paradise, pennsylvania. Charles has been published in various local poetry reviews and is the 2008 First Prize Winner for the Mad Poets Review. Haitian Mud Pies, Charles's next collection of poems will be completed in December 2011. Charles is married and has one son.

Cups of Misery

Cups of Misery
Jan Marin Tramontano

The streets paved in gold are pitted; cups of misery fill deep ruts. No haven for an immigrant philosopher with waning hope of refuge, resisting the slip into familiar despair. Too poor to afford bus fare home to see his beloved more than once each month.

He bargains with an invisible power to teach him how to live well, to shed the coat of many colors that make him foreign—

Like the young boy on the ship, he nourishes a tidal wave of desolation, an interior rage burns steadily. He fans embers of disappointment that belie his quiet exterior.

Is it too much to ask at the end of a protracted day to have a meal Sophie cooked,
stretch out at night, nuzzled next to her warm, soft body, awaken to the aroma of her coffee?

He imagines this as a kind of paradise, a place where loneliness is checked at the door.

***

Jan Marin Tramontano, a writer living in upstate New York, is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Woman Sitting in a Café and other poems of Paris and Floating Islands, a memoir about her father, I Am a Fortunate Man. and her poems appear in her poetry collective’s anthology, Java Wednesdays. Her poetry, stories, book reviews, and interviews have been published in numerous literary journals, magazines, and newspapers. Her first novel will be coming out later this year.

Genealogy and the Refugee

Genealogy and the Refugee
Phyllis Wax

I know who my people are.

And there are some back home
who know my people too,
down to the seventh son of the seventh son
and hope to make me
the final son. I know

my lineage
but will not write it down
or chart it on software
lest they find me here.

My family tree must float on damp breath
from mouth to ear
parent to child
parent to child
like an orchid thriving on air
trailing names
and memories
and tales

because when it is safe to speak it aloud
and map it all out on paper,
there will be no archives to check,
no birth records or marriage
registries. Our neighbors
will all be dead, our homes in rubble.
And history will have been revised so many times
only my children’s children
will know.

***

Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Her poetry has appeared in Ars Medica, Verse Wisconsin, Your Daily Poem, The New Verse News, Seeding the Snow, A Prairie Journal, Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar as well as other journals and anthologies, both print and online. Travel, nature and the news inspire much of her work. She may be contacted at poetwax@yahoo.com.

Same Fire

Same Fire
Jed Myers

I lost my name half a century before
I was born. Across the Atlantic
a ship came, bearded man on the deck,
same fire in his chest as mine,
preparing himself to give up
whatever can be forsaken, shaved,
stripped, or hidden away nameless
in his nervous marrow, to save
that spinning flame (he doesn’t know
it’s there behind his awareness, the harbor
too bright with churn and wake, tugs
and heaving crowds, too loud
with horses, groaning docks, men
unlashing crates—too much crashing
at his senses, for him to sense
the roar under his breath, the engine
that drives him to this shore). He stands
and waits to answer the cold uniform
questions that will pour through the grating
in the clearinghouse down the ramp,
where he will further unknow himself,
his tongue will fail his grandfather
glaring at him through the east wall,
his curls will splash out from under
the black wool hat, he’ll forget
to mouth the familiar blessing
for this moment of his arrival
in the new wilderness. He’s willing
to lay down the white silk of his ritual
fringes on the concrete, to walk over it
if this is his pathway to the street.
He’s already sold his prayer book
at a dark shop in Leeds, he’s told himself
as if in prayer, over and over,
he comes from nowhere, and practiced
the melodics of all the accents
flooding his ears. The blaring
clanging stomp-march of boots
and carts, hooves, horn-blasts, gears,
government stamps pounding the blotters,
the howls, cheers, and chatter
of the ten thousand tramps
awaiting official passage into chaos
and all its chances, is the music
to which he chants (devout
as the sons of Aaron who disappear
into fire) into the empty
basin of his processor’s face,
his new name, by which he will go
where the fire takes him. Here I am
Great-Grandfather, one burning
branch of your profane devotion.

Same Fire was previously published in California Quarterly

***

Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. His poems appear in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and in the new Rose Alley Press anthology of Northwest verse, Many Trails to the Summit. He is a psychiatrist with a therapy practice and teaches at the University of Washington.

What Serves

What Serves
Patricia Budd

With rag and pink crème,
I polish the silver
for Sunday dinner;
place settings, sugar bowl,
and footed creamer.
I rinse each piece
in a pan of hot water,
buff with a linen tea-towel.

The patina of the knife blade,
broken by scrolled letters:
M. J. G. from Almon. 
Stamped on the back
of the ornate handle,
a single word: COIN. 
A matching fork,
tine-tips pronged
like the beak of a hawk,
the better to serve slices
of butter in cracked ice. 

Martha, wife to Levi Gilman,
Great Great Grandmother,
passed it up the family tree,
branch by branch, to me.

But who was Almon:
a spurned Lothario?
doting uncle?
the man behind the faint smile
that plays on Martha’s lips
in her daguerreotype? 

What need in us is served
to churn the legends
clabbered from cream
spilled so long ago?

***

Patricia Budd graduated Sarah Lawrence, 1959.  She is a retired professional computer engineer, lives in Portland, Maine, received an MFA from Stonecoast in July, 2006. She teaches at the Osher Institute at USM. Her poems have been published in MARGIE, Alehouse, The MacGuffin and Anderbo.com among other journals and websites.

I Remember my Granny Whiting

I Remember my Granny Whiting
Cathy MacKenzie


My Granny Whiting I remember so,
Lots of true friends, never any foe,
Happy to take whatever life brings,
Dear to my heart, gave many things.

So faithful to many, always so true,
Sometimes in pain, sometimes blue,
A quiet voice, no fuss would she make,
In her great world, she did not take.

She loved her God, prayed to him,
In her Church singing lovely hymns,
A beautiful voice that she had,
She sang many solos, makes me sad.

Her arms now lay upon her chest,
Her dreams of yesterday at rest,
She had feelings of love so strong,
Once she, too, did yearn and long.

She can now forget the hurting pain,
That must have left a lasting stain,
Upon her happy heart so long ago,
Burdens that God gave her to stow.

Her long life perhaps did unfold,
Like the open pages of a book so old,
I’m sure she had daily pressure,
And life secrets she did treasure.

Her life so fine a dream as mine,
Is over now, frozen in time,
The scattering of the dust
Leaves shadows in the dusk.

In Memory of my Granny Whiting
(Elsie May Phillips Whiting, 1902-1992)


***

Cathy MacKenzie finished an 800-page genealogy on her MacKenzie family in 2007. She now devotes her time to writing poetry, essays and short stories. She also paints, pastels being her favourite medium and her grandchildren her favourite subjects.

She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her husband, and they spend their winters in Mexico. More information on Cathy (as well as upcoming ebooks) can be found at WritingWicket

Grandmother's House

Grandmother's House
Anthony A. Lee

“Are you my real grandmother?"
my brother asked,
amid living room bric-a-brac
after dinner,
dust thick on the chairs and carpets,
magazines scattered on the floor,
busy Persian carpet,
yellow light from the Tiffany lamp
in the dim room—just
grandma and her husband
there, except us—
his eyes wide, mouth curled.
He was eight and old enough to know better.
I, ten, told him silly questions were not polite.
She narrowed her eyes.
“No. I loved your baby father
just as if he had been mine.”
She didn’t move.
Grandpa pretended not to hear.
My dad turned away, looked down.
The room got darker.
On the ride home, we said
nothing. My brother broke
and said: “What was your name
before you were her son?”
“I don’t know,” the only answer
he could give.
It was midnight.
We were all orphans.

***

Anthony A. Lee, Ph.D. teaches African American history at UCLA. He is the winner of the Nat Turner Poetry Prize for 2003 (Cross Keys Press). His first book of poems, This Poem Means, was the winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for 2005 (Lotus Press). Some of his translations have been published in Táhirih: A Portrait in Poetry: Selected Poems of Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Kalimát Press, 2004). He teaches a poetry workshop sponsored by the Creative Arts Center, City of Manhattan Beach, Califonria.

We Are Seven - William Wordsworth

We Are Seven (1798)
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

A simple child...
That lightly draws its breath
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage girl-
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered 'round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air
And she was wildly clad;
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little maid,
How many may you be?"
"How many? Seven in all," she said
And wondering looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell."
She answered, "Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell
And two are gone to sea."

"Two of us in the churchyard lie,
My sister and my brother
And in the churchyard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."

"You say that two at Conway dwell
And two are gone to sea,
Yet, ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet maid, how this may be."

Then did the little maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the churchyard lie,
Beneath the churchyard tree."

"You run about, my little maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the churchyard laid
Then ye are only five."

"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little maid replied,
"Twelve steps or more from my mother's door
And they are side by side."

"My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit
And sing a song to them."

"And often after sunset, sir,
When it is light and fair
I take my little porringer
And eat my supper there."

"The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain
And then she went away."

"So in the churchyard she was laid
And, when the grass was dry
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I."

"And when the ground was white with snow
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go
And he lies by her side."

"How many are you, then," said I,
"If they two are in heaven?"
Quick was the little maid's reply,
"O master! We are seven."

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'T was throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will
And said... "Nay, we are seven!"

My Grandfather's Yahrtzeit

My Grandfather's Yahrtzeit
Marian Kaplun Shapiro

8:15 LA Time. 31 May, 1955. Dead. Declared.
Pronounced by The Doctor. Name: Edward (Issak) Kaplun
DOB: 18 April, 1880. C/O: Russia. Data entered.
Filed. Printed on request, for a small fee.
Birth/ Immigration/ Marriage/ Divorce/ Death.
You were There. You were Here.
You were Gone.
Did you know you were going? Did you leave
by starlight, on a golden comet? by flying
carpet? by galleon, sailing into the celestial fog?
As a fantastic dreambird playing Mendelsohn
on your violin? Or chanting the Shema, answering
the sweet tenor voice of the ancient cantor
come to lead you out?
I have my own story. I think
you took the red eye all the way to me,
sleeping in The Bronx. I think you blew
on my forehead. I think you whispered that
you loved me, that you would go with me
in every note I sang, or played, or heard. Live,
you said. Live.

***

Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988), a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). As a Quaker and a psychologist, her poetry often addresses the embedded topics of peace and violence, often by addressing one within the context of the other. A resident of Lexington, she was named Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts in 2006, in 2008, and in 2010.

Circular Conversation

Circular Conversation
Jan Marin Tramontano

He was eight when he came to America.
No. He was twelve. I’m sure of it.

He came alone. Can you imagine?
You’re wrong. He came with a cousin.

He was from Galicia in Poland.
No. He told me he was from Vienna.

He was twelve and had no one.
He was eight and had family here.

He was shuttled from place to place.
Maybe. But he had family here, I’m sure of it.

***

Jan Marin Tramontano, a writer living in upstate New York, is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Woman Sitting in a Café and other poems of Paris and Floating Islands, a memoir about her father, I Am a Fortunate Man. and her poems appear in her poetry collective’s anthology, Java Wednesdays. Her poetry, stories, book reviews, and interviews have been published in numerous literary journals, magazines, and newspapers. Her first novel will be coming out later this year.

On becoming a part of a Family tree

On becoming a part of a Family tree
Charles Carr


An estuary empties
your past
here it sails.
A conquering language:
names with O’s,
arrows thrust in their heart,
voiceless consonants.

I am at a new intersection of myself.
Perpendicular to births and deaths.
A flat land of memories.
Lines grow
deeper in the soil
bonding, illuminating

but I want to stop here,
before time,
completed,
curls up in a parenthesis.

***

Charles Carr is a native Philadelphian, born and raised in Southwest Germantown. Charles attended LaSalle College and Bryn Mawr College, and has a Master's degree in American History. For 35 years Charles has worked in social services, developing programs and advocating for the needs of abused and neglected children. Charles has also completed missions to Haiti and he is active in raising awareness and funds for Haiti. In 2009 Cradle Press of St. Louis published Charles's first book of poetry: paradise, pennsylvania. Charles has been published in various local poetry reviews and is the 2008 First Prize Winner for the Mad Poets Review. Haitian Mud Pies, Charles's next collection of poems will be completed in December 2011. Charles is married and has one son.

Open for submissions

We are planning to debut on April 1, 2011 and are currently seeking submissions.  Interested poets should read our submission guidelines.

Thanks

The Editor

Divergent, Yet Intersecting

Sample post
***

Divergent, Yet Intersecting
John Newmark

Transylvania, Holland, Alsace, Poland,
England, Germany, Lithuania and Texas
all contain soil upon which ancestors dwelt;
Farmers, beekeepers, shepherds,
tailors, blacksmiths, salesmen,
clergy, judges, and doctors.

As I research ancestral lines I discover
some ancestors celebrated Hanuka,
others Christmas, and still others
the Green Corn Ceremony;
Jewish, Methodist Episcopalian,
Puritan, Christian Scientist, Mennonite,
Choctaw, and Cherokee.

I shall never find the records
for my distant ancestors
who either came to this continent
by crossing the Land Bridge,
or originally emerged
from the Nanih Waiya in Mississippi.

I delve through obituaries,
microfilm depositories,
internet databases;
I interview relatives,
and rummage through attics.

What I find doesn't alter who I am;
It illuminates the divergent,
yet still intersecting
paths of my ancestors.

***
John Newmark, the editor of Generations of Poetry, maintains a genealogy blog at TransylvanianDutch. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with a wonderful woman named, Jenifer, and a black cat named, Schrodinger.