Forgotten Ground Regained
Ancestral Echoes
I’m son of Harry, son of Harold,son of someone ‧ I seek through annals,certification, and census returns.
Tasked by family ‧ to find ancestors,I feel kinship ‧ to king-sworn poets,those bards bidden ‧ to butter upsome upstart son ‧ or swashbucklerwho seized a slice ‧ of southern Britain,who needs renown ‧ now he is crowned;a lordly lineage ‧ laid out in verse:Son of Albert, son of Edward himself.
My start is simple: I sat with unclesall hoary-haired ‧ and happy to tellboldly embellished ‧ bygone gossip,hold forth hearsay, hearthside chatter.
Son of Charles, Son of Joseph,
Beyond the yarns, a yield of papers:births and baptisms, burials and wills,like a monk recording ‧ chronicle annals,I write the requisite ‧ to register lives;the earlier entries, ever briefer.
Son of Josiah, Son of Isaac,
Following further ‧ is a foreign land:ancestral stories ‧ spoken to none,a patchy picture, parish recordsthat mice and mould ‧ have managed to chew,a legacy of legend ‧ that lessens to mythwhere hazy heroes ‧ hold the same name.So I assume somehow ‧ they’re surely linked,like a scribe stretching ‧ his sources taut.
Son of Edmund, Son of Ingeld,Son of Wig, Son of Freawine,
Fourteen fathers back, the footprints die.Like the buttering bard, bold but desperate,a final flourish ‧ of far off godsderived from the divine, a venerable line:
Son of Weland, Son of Wada,Son of Bealdaeg, Son of Woden.
This poem was originally publilshed in Withowinde 184, p 14, Winter, 2017
Copyright © Martin Vine, 2012
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