POEMS & THOUGHTS
Your tombstone stands among the rest, neglected & alone.
The name and date are chiselled out on polished stone.
It reaches out to all who care, it is to 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 blood in flesh 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 and visit you.
A gentle child she bore
survived the day, no more.
Shall I visit, or shall I stay, just a whisper ~ yesterday.
Vern Paul
Dublin, Ireland
2002
I search for you yet do not even know your name
I press on praying my efforts will prove fruitful
the records do not list you or the other women who have lived and loved and laughed, gave birth, and died,
the records perpetrate the myth that you were never here
but I stand whole and bare my soul
and vow to find you as I live
I search for you in old records, in churches, at the Embassy,
in small dimly lit rooms
in the back of obscure libraries and archives
and pour over barely readable handwritten ledgers with magnifying glass and flashlight
I live on mainly toast these days
there isn't time for meals or much sleep
feeling as I always do, on the very brink of discovery
Perhaps THIS will be the day I find the one
seemingly insignificant clue, which will lead me to you
although I did not find you listed in the Census Records
I am not deterred, you may turn up yet,
on an Immigration or Naturalization list somewhere perhaps,
or maybe tucked away inside some bank of vital statistics,
long forgotten like so many others,
your name having become lost over the long years Your name could be lying even now
amidst the millions of documents stored and locked away
safeguarded in the bowels of a giant warehouse
all stopped up from apathetic crowds
who have long ceased their visits
your precious name, lying just inside
a myriad of records packed in tight, packed in to stay
never guessing I would come
Author @Sarah Elizabeth Rose
a Rootsweb.com lister, written on Mother's Day 200
They think that I should cook and clean,
and be a model wife.
I tell them it's more interesting
to study Grandpa's life.
They simply do not understand
why I hate to go to bed . . .
I'd rather do two hundred years
of research work instead.
Why waste the time we have on earth
just snoring and asleep?
When we can learn of ancestors
that sailed upon the deep?
We have Priests, Rabbis, lawmen, soldiers,
more than just a few.
And yes, there's many scoundrels,
and a bootlegger or two.
How can a person find this life
an awful drudge or bore?
When we can live the lives of all
those folks who came before?
A hundred years from now of course,
no one will ever know
Whether I did laundry,
but they'll see our Tree and glow . . .
'Cause their dear old granny left for them,
for all posterity,
not clean hankies and the like,
but a finished family tree.
My home may be untidy,
'cause I've better things to do . . .
I'm checking all the records
to provide us with a clue.
Old great granny's pulling roots
and branches out with glee,
Her clothes ain't hanging out to dry,
she's hung up on the Tree.
author unknown
I started out calmly, tracing my tree,
To find, if I could, the making of me;
And all that I had was great grandfather's name, Not knowing his wife or from which he came.
I chased him across a long line of states, And came up with pages and pages of dates. When all put together, it made me forlorn; I'd proved that poor grandpa had never been born.
One day, I was sure the truth I had found, Determined to turn this whole thing upside down. I looked up the record of one Uncle John, But then found the old man was as young as his son.
Then, when my hopes were fast growing dim, I came across records that must have been him. But the facts I collected made me quite sad, Dear old great grandpa was never a dad.
I think maybe someone is pulling my leg, I'm not all sure I wasn't hatched from an egg, After hundreds of dollars I've spent on my tree, I cannot help but wonder if I'm really me.
author anonymous
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