I look at her family as though <br />I had been born into it, <br />to imagine her ancestors as mine, <br />and that our relationship is almost incestual, <br />like two unfamiliar cousins. <br /> <br />Perhaps it’s because my family’s past <br />is so ambiguous, almost lost; <br />where a face like mine could wander <br />in and out of a census unrecognised, <br />or immortalised unknowingly <br />in the foreground of a Constable; <br /> <br />or else indefinite articles in prison cells <br />or reluctant conscripts, <br />finding their personal inch <br />in an acre of mud. <br /> <br />Whereas she is more of a blossom <br />on a shoot, sprung from a branch <br />with a root imbedded, <br />firmly with its gnarled decades <br />winding to the sun: <br /> <br />two horses fed first, <br />growing impatient in a paddock <br />where the two hands wrestle reins <br />between their fingers, awkward grasps <br />on leather, and dragging metal into the fields; <br /> <br />a low sun leaving a wedge of shadow <br />on the eyes under flat caps, <br />and inborn sounds, harsh syllables <br />like the sound of the twisted crops, <br />ringing in equine ears. <br /> <br />And then it’s the onset of post-war efficiency; <br />a razorish hum of depressed engines <br />and accurate furrows – <br />a forsaken half slice of bread and awkward <br />butter unskilfully spread, assuming <br />a place on the table with tins of milk <br />while the noise fractures the earth, <br /> <br />like raking up the dead and putting <br />in the living, sowing a tree <br />where a stranger might one day decide <br />to hang his boots on its branch, <br /> <br />one delicate string to lace the two together.<br /><br />Stug Jordan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lineage-4/
