Challenging Poetry

the family knot

it’s dangerous for family to twist too close—
one woman in a family tree
was her mother’s cousin
and her own second cousin
(once removed)—her father
was her mother’s uncle
which made her grandparents
her great-grandparents.

her grandfather gave her
the son of his age—
his second wife’s only child,
her half (great) uncle to husband—
a poor gift indeed,
and she took him
with ill grace, for her child
now would have one man
as grandfather,
three times over.

her son inherited:
the family nose: sharp
the family chin: stubborn,
the family hair: fiery red,
the family eyes: pure, cold, blue,
the family height: short,
the family curse: temper.

but springing forth
from this family knot
(a tree would branch)
came her son’s final inheritance—
a weakness in the nerves
and muscles that made him
ache and freeze,

he passed it on to his children,
and their children,
and their children—
on through the centuries:
the family disease.

In my father's family, there's a hereditary disease--a dominant trait. If you have it, you have a fifty percent chance of giving it to your children. My father gave it to three of his six children--my brother and two of my sisters. Of those three, my brother has given it to three out of five, and my sister (the other is unmarried and doesn't have children yet) gave it to three of her five. I don't have it.

Dad (and his brother) got it from his mother, from her mother, from her father, from his father, from his mother, from her mother, (I think that's right--I may have skipped a generation or two) whose father was the son in the family knot in our records (I don't have the specifics on hand, so I made up a different one for the purposes of the poem)--before than, we have no record of a family disease.

But the idea of it has fascinated me since I first learned about genetics in ninth grade biology.