Tracing the Lineage - Debora Hammond

[Lawrence Robinson]

Tracing the Lineage
A response to Matthew Shenoda’s poem “Traces”

Inspired to reflect on “the ways we construct a sense of ourselves . . .
	in relation to place, to history and to one another;
		especially . . . those who remind us that we’ve never been alone.”

I think first of my youngest sister,
	taken too soon from this life;
		and then of the long lineage of ancestors
	who made my life possible.

My great grandmother 
	who homesteaded on the Colorado plains,
		gathering cow paddies to heat the humble home 
		made from sod.
That dirt is in my bones.

And farther back, the Scottish immigrants, 
	exiled perhaps from their homes
		by the enclosure of the commons,
	tearing those simple peasants
		from the soil of their birth.

And maybe even further back to those intrepid spirits
	who braved the journey north
		as the ice retreated from that frozen isle.

And then maybe to those earliest ancestors
	who emerged from the ancient seas
		to make a home on the new earth.

And all the way back 
	to that dust
		from those first stars
	whose lingering light still echoes
		in the night sky.

	- Debora Hammond
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