Ancestors

Gone before us are
the ones we do not know -
family, kin not seen
except dark eyes, dark dress
quiet hands: the moment lived 
captured in glass. 

Lives seem fleeting now
from our distance, like 
shattered pictures cast 
on the floor, like
trees disowning their own leaves, 
lost on wind all tears and deeds,
worlds upborne as threads of light
reeled back into the dark.

But their live blood ties
an endless knot of being,
a covenant of circled hands
is a chainmail worn.
An auld acquaintance 
hovers in my smile, lights my eyes,
infuses me: I am their
last pale tea.

I see through their eyes 
and they see through me.
I carry them as microcosm
in my heart and lungs.
They end in me these silent ones
with their silent eyes.
I am cul-de-sac in their timeline
it ends in me, my ancestry -
both the circle and the line.

The seed is sown on barren, modern soil 
of 90's wintering
iglooed from 
all the past has known.
Coldness grows as love recedes
and all hands count-out money now
let go of what's irrelevant.

Glass breaks into inconsequence 
dark eyes, dark dresses
sharded into fractures that won't heal.

Severed from the past is 
our commonweal.

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