poem by D Browning

[freedindeed]

My grandfather is dead
my father’s father is dead
the one who peeled apples
with a pocket knife
the one who trapped raccoons
in the vegetable garden

I remember only the slight man
(no towering figure from childhood)
the man who watched Lawrence Welk
and savored sweets;
not the one who rode a tank
to war
not the one who delivered mail
on dusty lanes;
they are the same man
but faces I never knew

He scoured gravestones
and windowless rooms,
the searcher of names,
unraveling the family litany
ancestor upon ancestor
making whole
what was fragmented
restoring
what was lost,
an identity in this foreign land

The past is much with us
this he knew,
the unassuming man
with an easy smile
the quiet man
with clear eyes

My grandfather is dead
the man who stooped
to pull weeds from
flowerbeds;
My father’s father is dead
the man who knew the truth
of all those gravestones,
who never shied from it;

My patriarch is dead.