Names Of The Ancestors - Thomas R. Smith

[Lawrence Robinson]

Names Of The Ancestors

We are moving backward in the granary of our ancestors' names.
When we speak them, wheat fields harvested three thousand years ago
sway again in winds gone on to other galaxies.
Somewhere on that track are all the hands that met mine in the night
and the spoken love word hovering like a hummingbird at the lip of the abundant flower.
The wisdom of sleepers forms a tradition along the arc of generations,
anointing the slippery head of the newborn rising from the sea
and the yellow skull of the corpse set out to dry in the desert.
Now we are touching his twenty layers of embroidered robes.

	- Thomas R. Smith