heritage

Sammi’s Weekender #235 (mirror)

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Timeless Reflections

For twenty-seven thousand days and nights
what you have seen is not all that ever was.
You see in me today’s truth, one perpetual now.

With one look I never judged anyone.
I reflected an eternal present
without darkness, forgiving the past,
each glimmer gone, days and nights
numbered and stacked
upon your tired shoulders.

Like ashes from wood burned
in past fires, days forgotten, names confused,
adjusted appearances, time
carefully dealt from fate’s shuffled deck,
one at a time until there was none.
Lines of life get clearer, youth
forgotten there, inside grandfather’s mirror.

Mirrors can’t look both ways.
The reflection they cast is only today.
Mind the gaps and fix the cracks, everyone has history.

This mirror hung in my grandfather’s house 100 years ago, then in our dining room from before the day I was born. Click on the photo to read Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Mirror.”

Poetry: Proudly Pissed

I wasn’t born in coal mines,
though I like to say I was—
I’ve never mined underground for coal,
yet it’s a deep soulful part of me.

It’s about heritage in my genes,
not just my father; grands as well,
going back hundreds of years,
to mines in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

Spoiled me. Never as tough, rugged, or ruthless
as they. No. Not descended
from fucking royalty, no dukes or counts.
Dirty, stinking, poor souls; a legacy
facing daily underground misery.

Piss-poor. Hard core. The Molly Maguires,
maybe for sure, perhaps not. I confess.
I’m tribal. My people: a joyless pride.

Look both ways and wonder.
What were they like? Who will they be?
Mind the gaps.
Turn the page.