Looking up the ancestors
Tracing a family tree
Am I in search of them, my love
Or really in search of me?
Finding pairs of twins who married
Sailed off across the pond
Only to find in a generation
Home was what they’d scorned
Trying to cram onto scraps of paper
Names and dates and more
Wondering why they had chosen to scatter
Themselves from shore to shore
Picking over the bones of stories
Scraps of my family lore
Wishing I’d asked before someone passed
A couple of questions more
Chuckling over the old intrepid
Tales of derring done
The girl who ran guns in place of her brothers
As they’d only blab to mum
The lady highwayman; army driver;
Girl of a thousand smiles
The one whose paintings went down with the ship
The ones who ran quite wild
How would I fit, these elderly legends
How would I measure up?
Putting myself into clogs and sabots
Filling old boots with luck
Knowing the secrets that spring from boxes
Hidden on dusty shelves
Of births and deaths and marriage and proxies
Chicken-scratch bibles and tombstone kells
The hideous source of a score of quarrels
Love letters from the wrong side of a war
Black sheep and politics; actors and brothels,
Family heirlooms and so much more
Mystery facts are now uncovered
A lady who lied for years
Pretending to youth and no old lovers
To soothe a new husband’s fears
Learning why some names were missing records
During a time of strife
Who had migrated and waited and waited
For news of their family’s life
Postcards and poems and brochures and programmes
From concert and theatre and prom
Knicknacks and geegaws and troubles and trinkets
Collections they handed down
Sepia prints and chemical glass
My ancient faces scowl
Melancholic in rented clothes
They are caught dead in now
Katherine Shirley 