An ancestral awakening |
The Ties that Bind In the beautiful Smoky Mountains that bred me long ago, the oak trees stand and quiver by a river I use to know. There under the glistening moonlight I’d often wonder why, as I stopped by the water to listen I could hear a gentle sigh. As though I had heard a calling from somewhere deep within, a forest thick with evergreen that I was standing in. I thought about my family from generations before who’d fought, and lived, and died there settling all the scores. How the very soil I stood upon was washed with ancestral blood, while lineal voices from yesterday still echoed in the wood. Scotch - Irish, German and French had sailed across the sea, to a land completely unknown filled with trepidation and mystery. I thought of the overwhelming excitement that must have shown on their face, when first seeing the beauty of such a splendid place. How it must have felt to stand at the very same water as me, walking the hills and the hollows touching the great oak trees. The moon that had helped guide them was still shining high above; it showed them a path to follow as they lingered in the place I now stood. I began to feel unrelenting remorse that I had lived my life in such vain, when those who had come before me had forged relentlessly to hand me their name. I knew I must take this awakening into my current state, and walk proudly into the future heeding off any uncalled for mistakes. As how can one ever discount the ties that lead to our past, that placed us where we now stand that cast the dye that was cast? Our ancestor’s course through our blood like the river flows out to the sea, carrying us back into yesterday and straight into eternity. |