Her face, the gaze so like my father’s that I feel a pang.
Her sturdy spirit pushes against
her unreliable body and sputtering memory.
We smile around the room,
genetics pull us close as we count the years
and treasure the minutes.
How is Auntie Pam, we ask?
How is your father, they ask?
Auntie, uncle, cousins, nieces,
sharing jokes and cups of tea
and stories of good days and
surgeries and babies and weather
and all the bits and pieces of life
that knit our tributaries into one river.
Genetics pull us close as we count the years
and treasure the minutes.
He’s a darling little pork chop, we say of
the newest baby, all smiles and cowlicks.
He’s able to travel again, we say of
our aged father, rallying his body for the trip
to see and hold that baby, his great-great grandson.
We talk about blue eyes and green,
and the names of generations gone,
and how mother and daughter were
buried together because they were never apart in life
and it seemed right.
And yes, we will go and visit the place
where they lay in their forever embrace
while we are in England gathering up
and tending to our roots.
Literary wanderings 