My third semester at TC just ended yesterday, with the most exhausting paper I've ever had the pleasure of writing. The work I've been doing this semester has been really important for me. It's all been so moving, that I wrote a poem! The poem is a little bit about my traveling spirit, so it fits in with the rest.
If I hadn’t just enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner,
duck fat and chanterelle,
22 pound turkey with sage and morels,
my dark haired ancestors gazing down upon us from the wall, oil paint and candle light,
I might not so acutely feel the weight of my ancestors as I write this. They fuse to my soul as surely as their monogramed silverware joined the flesh of the bird to the woodsy mushroom.
And if the story had begun with the Indian’s arrows, perhaps my mother and I would not have lit the cast iron stove together, striking flint with tinder to make the sparks fly.
I’m from the miserable boat people of 1620, the ones who survived. I’m from the witches hanging in Salem, witches and slave owners. I’m from many of the saddest boats.
How is it that the boats I take are so joyous? Pedra de Sal, pamberi chimurenga, y la mariposa en arrullo. Can I be from there? My ancestors left their home, but that they didn’t change where they were from. Thanksgiving dinner, pilgrim pie and succotash, corn pudding on a mahogany table. Even as the weight –that food!– drags me down, I am nourished by it.
