Ancestral

The Sun shone on me this morning

It was a healing benediction

Flooding everything with rays of daffodil light

I felt your anxiety pouring through me

As I told you your struggles would not be in vain

And that even if the rest of my family forgets

Chooses to turn their backs on these truths

For you I gave expression to the grief

And feelings of overwhelm and powerlessness

God knows the storms they suffered at your hands

Before she left

I only know i feel the echoes at those times of day

And later I crashed

As I ran in unconscious fevered desperation

To the land of your birth

Always you were there in the shadows

Your pain and longing calling to me

So when people around me close the door

On mystical ancestral possibilities

That warp and wend their ways

All through our family’s lives now

I will at least try to give it some sort of voice

For somewhere on the other side of the world

There is a soldier suffering

Because I closed the door

With nasty words

Even as I spoke the truth of how it hurt

There was always something deeper going on

And sadly

All of this has revealed to me lately

That often my ways are not golden

But rather they are filled with

Those ghostly tendrils of

Angers, frustrations, grief, i

Ignorance, impatience

And shadows