some have no interest in looking under gravestones for ghosts /
don’t look there / there’s nothing to see / climb high enough in the
branches of your family tree / there is a witch who narrowly
escaped being burned alive /and a priest who didn’t /
laundresses / bright smiths / gandy dancers / rivers of babies
who died in infancy / women who made things with their hands /
men who made war / family resemblance is a mystery / it skips
generations / a ghost child returns from the past / a lost child
is born who can’t see her eyes in anyone else’s eyes /
nothing is erased / only buried / there are no good old days /
names changed hands like weapons / farmers turned over
more than land / no one escaped the trauma of loneliness
and whiskey was cheap therapy / what if all you had to process
was the pain of this one lifetime? / not you / you’ve reached
the end of the line / your ancestors speak through the cracks
in your bones like you need each other to heal / they arrange
themselves as airplanes behind a runway waiting to land /
talk to them / ask them to haunt / your dreams / open the past
and walk through it / meet your foremother / more than
a century between / you / but like you left Minnesota for
washington / your house / not far from her little blue house /
meet your great-great-great-great grandfather / his obituary
reads hell to him was what men make for themselves here on earth /
remember him as someone who was given a life and chose
to learn from it / when your father said you were born hyperaware /
it wasn’t him who said it / he became a conduit through
which your ancestors summoned you /and they said
other things too / go where the whales are / find a boat
that will carry you across the water / it will carry us all home
