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Living it up
Forgive me the sins of ancestors
good for a rare walk, in pleasant discourse
going by us in the field,
who we often see together
in street and in house
or lately come back again
from being hanged and buried.
Poems on the topic: ancestor
Poems on the topic “ancestor” on Poets.by.
Heritage
The ancestors give us
a foot, a good hand,
a great fault, all.
I am born
to all things.
Ode to Old Shoes
the feet seek freedom
busting the broadest toe box
splaying out for balance
in an almost gape
at the gravity of it all
and the earth’s endlessness
such a repertoire
of grounds and surfaces
for the feet to savor without ingesting
to rely upon without clinging
a lesson from the dust
of the ancestors
who would’ve gone to rest
in their best shoes
the straight and narrow ones
that pinched all through church
Frequent Flyer
I was flying in an aircraft of bones
not the pilot not the ball-turret gunner
I was flying in an aircraft as if
in my own bones
my aluminium hide
the captain’s intercom voice
goes all through me and the flight
attendant’s safety instructions
her boredom buzzes against my rivets
like a trapped wasp
but I rise hungry to exceed myself
I dip a wing and turn
out from the lit grids of suburbs
with their unlikely multitude
of shadows which must be trees
and down there somewhere
Things to do with human bones in the Neolithic
Deflesh them with bone knives.
Let the wolves and ravens deflesh them.
Gather them into skin bags and bury them under the hearth.
Feed them beer.
Dig them up every fall and dance with them.
Dig ditches around them so the uninitiated cannot get too close.
Build mounds over them so the otherworld can ascend and be closer to us.
Organize them by size and type.
Rearrange them into new, mash-up ancestors.
Break them so they will not follow us in our dreams.
Suck out the marrow so their spirits will protect us in our dreams.
Burn them and place them in jars of clay decorated with rows of pits, as from missing teeth.
Erect stones around them in a circle so they will remember us who stand in the light.
* * *
I visit
the graves
Great grandfather
under wild flowers sons
sons here now I
eye
of us all
but sonless
see no
hop
clover boy to stop
before me
Two
She moves in spring
as one who
has carried herself
all winter among
famous people.
Yet she does
her own housework;
knows, as her
ancestors knew,
to spread white wash
over rhododendrons
in bright sun, like
remnants of snow —
glimpses, which some
have seen, of
the mountain,
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