Just Folks


I am like him, so they say,
Who was dead before I came.
Cheeks and mouth and eyes of gray
Have been fashioned much the same.
I am like her, so they say,
Who was dead ere I was born,
And I walk the self-same way
On the paths her feet have worn.
There is that within my face
And the way I hold my head
Which seems strangely to replace
Those who long have joined the dead.
Thus across the distance far
In the body housing me
Both my great-grandparents are
Kept alive in memory.

Edgar A. Guest 1934

          DEAR ANCESTOR


Your tombstone stands among the rest;
Neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out
On polished, marbled stone.
It reaches out to all who care
It is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist
You died and I was born.
Yet each of us are cells of you
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse
Entirely not our own.
Dear Ancestor, the place you filled
One hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left
Who would have loved you so.
I wonder if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot,
And come to visit you.
Author Unknown

           FAMILY JEWEL


I hold in my hands a treasure so rare,
I close my eyes and imagine I'm there,
When she wrote each name with care,
Not knowing with me some day she'd share.
Could she have known what a jewel it would be?
That it would be something I waited to see?
That one hundred years later the Bible I'd hold,
That in it's pages more that God's story is told.
I imagine she was proud of her family,
For what greater gift could there be,
Did she imagine the family to come?
That I would be from the family of her son?
This family heirloom I will handle with care,
So that in another hundred years it will be there,
For my great great grandchildren may it be,
A gift they are searching for to add to the family tree.

A House I Once Knew

This is a poem I had found online today and wanted to share it with you.
It was written by Leo VanMeer 1907-2006
       There are mars on the doors and walls
        Its rooms are empty and wide.
       Here and there is a broken pane
        Where no night wind creeps inside.
       The front porch has fallen to ruin
         With vines in possession there.
       A shed is tumbled and strewn
         And rubbish is everywhere.
       Somehow it softens in the moonlight
         And my fancy wanders free.
       That old house is more than a house
         It once was home to me.
       I can see a place by the window
         Were the firelight once played inside.
       I can picture the porch as it use to be
         And grounds so clean and wide.
       Doors with well-oiled hinges
          Let in our willing feet.
       With everything in place as it should
          And everything trim and neat.
        I see in mellowed reflection
          until years have changed it to be
        A house with a memory : its more than a house
          It once was home to me.
        I'd give so much to live again
          In that house when it was young.
        Then it knew our laughter and tears,
           With its memory only begun.
        I was unwise to have left it, I know
            All I got for my pains
       Was a heap of things I thought worthwhile
            And desire to be back again.
        It might be made home again, who knows?
        I watch the moonlight slant through a tree,
        And know that old house was more then  a house
              It once was home to me.