LMS VI: sorting heirlooms

this is your inheritance; do not dare leave this world with field-rocks in your pockets, plant your heart in every field, until the whole earth is bound in the roots of your veins, and when they steal that - we will steal the sky. napo link

1. the only remaining-record for my great great grandmother's life is a short court document that states; 'the land stolen will never be her own' - life is not in the practice of giving back what it takes, and land has a way of becoming blood, and human flesh has a way of dying before we learn these things or realize we can fly. it is enough for me to know she tried, i will not tie her feathers to bitterness, i will not try to steal away soil in my shoes, or my hands, or my pockets, i will plant my garden in her honor and whisper to every straining tomato plant and geranium flower, 'this too is yours.'

2. the land killed my great grandfather before he was old enough to be old; though his skin was already weathered down in grooves of worry-lines, dynamite powder, and coal dust; and i always wonder if they were able to clean his fingernails before they buried him for the last time. if i saw him somewhere today, i would take out my nail-file and a bar of soap and a basin of well-water, and i would wash his hands until the grooves ran smooth. i would show him pictures of his son's and grandson's wrinkled faces, i would tell him they lived. i think of him when the soil clings to my own hands, and i promise him i will not track in soil in my home, even when nostalgia threatens to bury me too.

3. my grandfather farmed his whole life, with his whole life. one sun-baked plot of land split clean to seven brothers. some years the harvest was good, some years the seeds became rocks and gravel, and his daughters wandered the field harvesting stones. in the end it wasn't the sun that overturned the land inside out, it was the flood-waters. i never take rain for granted because of him. every drop in my cup, every river-bed, every sweat-soaked brow, i hear him saying 'the rain's coming strong tonight' - and i nod and believe i too am a prophet, and i warn my unborn children to not keep the field-stones in their pockets, in case the flood comes, in case the ground breaks, in case the land is stolen away - we will be light on our feet, when it is time to leave this earth, we will fly.

memories kept from harvest(s)

In the early fall, my mother cans our harvest vegetables,
mashing tomatoes into sauce,
and working cucumbers into pickles,
and pushing beans into vinegar jars -
and for a moment the prairie grasses sigh
in homestead relief -

it hasn't all been undone...
look how they keep hold
of yesterday's fruits,
surely the earth will turn again

i always assume her canning
is more about keeping ritual than vegetable
more about memory than meal-prepping,
because she tells stories of her mother
while she cans, busy hands, and steaming water,
blistered knuckles, and rolling laughter -

and i imagine these are the same stories
her mother told her daughter, and so on and
so forth, and isn't that all an awfully lot
to pack into a jar of tomatoes?

preservation napo week link

decades ago, my grandmother
picked a collection of leaves and flowers
to press between two panes of glass,
so that their beautiful colors might be preserved
for another year,
i sometimes imagine these pressed flowers
were picked for me, that maybe she -
in sweet gardening instinct
wanted to preserve a little love
to be kept through the winter,
that maybe she imagined a granddaughter
tracing the veins in dried leaves,
and tracing them back to her.

each year the colors fade a little more,
and sometimes i fear i'll wake to find
only dust beneath the glass,
that my meager memories
will have faded dark, and
we both will have forgotten each other.

a few years ago, in loving urgency,
i scoured my mother's own garden,
for flowers that looked like her mother's -
and together we placed them between glass
to save for another year,
and i promise
to teach my daughters,
to teach their daughters
to do the same,
if only so that they may trace their hands
along weathered veins, and remember
the world is beautiful, and desperate
with love that weathers on.





content warning: pregnancy loss -
pressed flowers and love

I remember in 4th grade when our teacher gave each of us
a lily to dissect; tweezers peeled sepal, from stamen, from pistil,
with magnifying glass I held my breath as the soft petals
crumpled easily under my child-hands, trying to be delicate
I didn't like the feeling of un-doing, and tried to put it back together.

My grandmother liked to press flowers from her garden
under panes of glass; this too is violent in another way
to the flower, but her hands were always gentle;
arranging, fixing, carefully caressing each flower
to its spot, to create a permanent bouquet.

I will never forget the day I found out you were alive;
a little piece of me, and him, that God had began to knit;
I clutched at my stomach and held my breath imagining
little hands and little toes clutching back at me; perfect.

I tried once to put the flowers from my mother's garden
under glass panes like my grandma, but my hands
were clumsy, uncareful, and the glue smudged ugly
between each flower, petals bent and unbent, I tried
to hide it, but my mother said, the glue fingerprints
made the flowers more beautiful, and she kept it.

It is seared between the panes of glass within my heart,
the day I found out, you were gone. "Too small" the doctor said,
"too delicate to live" but I know God is not clumsy with his hands
like I am, he is a careful craftsman, like my grandmother,
gentle, arranging, fixing, breathing life into being.

You were not too much of anything, you were perfect;
but the world is the one that is not always gentle.
I know now, achingly, devastatingly, why my mother thought
even my smudged fingerprints were precious;
because she had once counted my fingers and toes
with her breath-held and her heart-racing.

I promise you, I will press your memory
into every version of me, I will carry your breath,
with my own now, I will plant you in my garden,
I will hold you in the clutching tightness of my hands
when I am holding nothing, and when I am holding everything.

I will cherish this little piece of life you lent to me
for even this little while, while you were mine;
because love is not a gentle flower to be easily undone;
love is the pressed flower made strong between two panes of glass.

taking some time to update this thread with my ancestry poems from NaPo and NaPoWeek so that they all continue to be in one place for ease of reading and storing. Many of my paternal ancestors worked in Coal Mines in West Virginia, I've driven past some of these places where now it's just desolate holes in the mountains. Some of them were injured in these mines. Some of them participated in riots for labor rights from these mines. For some of them the dust from these mines never left their lungs, even when they stopped working. I'm very interested in inherited debt and the dust that's still sitting in my lungs from generations ago. Are we still raging? Are we still wounded? Or is that ache when I breathe a sign I should get out of the mines while I still can? These two poems are about all of that.



flammable napo link




4.23.25

from dust to dust to the fire that never consumes napo link

my great grandfather spent more time in the tunnels of mines, than in the scorch of summer's sun. he said he knew how to see in the dark. but sometimes i wonder if that is a lie only blind men tell. i once spent an entire day digging my fingernails into a playground's sandbox, thinking i could make it through the core of the earth and into a new world. my mother told me, it'd be too hot - so i put on my swimsuit and sunglasses and prepared to burn-alive if needed. there are some things i'd be willing to die for. one day my grandfather emerged from the mines and could not stop coughing, the dust had filled his lungs, like he had ravished the mines, and it wouldn't leave. his last request, was that they would not bury him when he died, because he wanted to see the sun. i have crossed the place where his bones were buried, and contemplated digging a tunnel through the earth to the other side of the world with him, so we could find out where the world ends together. one day when my lungs are full of whatever the world weighs me down with, i want them to tie a lock of my hair to the tail of a hawk and we can fly into the sun.

There is a terrifyingly sad story in 2 Samuel 18 of David losing his beloved son, who had been hunting him down. Absolom had to die for David to live, but that doesn't make it any easier. The Bible is heavy with blessing + curse / and the truth is sometimes we don't which is which, because the blessings feel heavy too.


4.26.25

Absalom, Absalom - stones in my pocket napo link

My grandfather carried burdens heavy as stones,
like David, maybe he didn't know which ones
were weapons to load a sling,
and which were weights against a heavy heart
but children have a way of inheriting
even the hidden things fathers carry
my hands have traced these memories
and wondered what we're holding them for.

Absalom will die in every version of scripture,
I've tried to rip these pages out of my Bible, but
there he is again; hung by his hair in the oak's embrace,
I can't watch, but I'll carry his story eyes-closed
wondering if he is held by the wounds of old wars,
or the debts of fathers paid by sons, and
when will we stop carrying all these heavy things.

David cried his name until it bled into the air,
wishing he could take his place instead upon the cruel tree.
But we don't choose our memories or our inheritance
even if we close our eyes, field stones show up in pockets;
pieces of the earth, weighing us down until we listen
or scream. I trace the lines in my hands, feel the inherited scars,
the familiar grooves of these rocks I've been born to carry until I die
or choose to hide them in the hands of my children.

Maybe we all hang somewhere between the earth and sky,
tangled in roots reaching back, heavy-laden
waiting for the pierce.

5.5.25

heritage napo link

my great grandfather once tried
to kill a man with an axe, but rage
made him miss his mark, and so
two men were saved with a jagged scar -
he was charged 18 dollars in court;
walked free. if he would have killed the man,
my father's father would have never been,
nor my father, nor me, and so in this winding way
that day, i suppose, these twisted branches
were almost pruned. and i wonder sometimes
which scars are harder for a family to carry
the ones who survived with jagged wounds
or the ones born of rage.

This is a favorite one from my napo week thread "weathered roots" which was all a reflection on ancestry.

10.25.25

unknown napoweek link

in my family there is some confusion
over who my great grandfather was -
two men listed in alternating frequency
on census records,
like two branches grown too close together
their fruit can't be separated,
and so in respect for my unknowing
i whisper my love to the cardinal,
and to the raven, and every spare sparrow
that roosts on my windowsill,
i could be stingy with my affection,
but this is easier isn't it?
to love them all until they leave,
to watch my love take flight,
to accept in the unknowing,
maybe there's grace
caught in the whisper
of an appalachian lullaby
ringing in my grandfather's
newborn ears.