Challenging Poetry

Family History

they say space and time are twisted
together in a knot. I like to imagine
that if we knew which thread to
unravel, we could
read scrolls from the Library
of Alexandria or take tea
with Amelia Earhart on the eve
of her final voyage or
wander the fields of
Saratoga and Gettysburg
and Waterloo and too many others
to name, before they were
plowed with blood and tears.

But when I think of history,
those mighty figures are too far away,
and I ache to view family stories.

I would love to spy
my grandfather as he stoked
engines on the great lakes all
summer long through my mother's
childhood..

I would love to
ride with my great-great- five times
great grandmother as she broke her
husband from jail and sit with her
while she waited to be given a horse
so she could ride after him again.

I would love to kiss
my grandfather's cheek before
he flew on the last day
of the second World War
to be shot down over the Pacific—
the crash that left him a limp
for fifty-two years, six children,
and thirty-eight grandchildren.

But space and time are too hard
to unwind, and I am left to view history
through leftover words and pictures,
and the stamp of family on my face
and hands, my hair and height,
my life, their stories.

April 24—Play around with historical facts