The Good Ancestor
A poem by Daverick Leggett
Every day I walk a hundred years
to the hill where my great, great granddaughter sits.
I carry words of blessing
and reach to touch her back.
But feeling me near she turns,
sad-eyed and heavy with grief.
“What was it like?” she asks,
“when the great whales swam,
when the birds sang you awake,
when the rains came soft,
and the soil smelled sweet underfoot?”
And the blessings
catch in my throat.
On darker days she turns,
her famished face charred, and eyes
sunk in their bony orbits,
burn with curses.
And the blessings
froth at my mouth
with the poisonous
spume of betrayal.
On the darkest of all days
I walk the hundred years
and find no one there.
Let today be the bright day.
Let today be the bright day
I lay my hand upon her back.
And, feeling me near, she turns
and blesses me, saying,
“Your love was fierce enough,
sweet ancestor,
your love was fierce enough.”
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“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side”
— Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott