Poem: "American Roots"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is today's freebie, inspired by a backchannel prompt from my partner Doug about his mother's family history.  It also fills the "familiarity" square in my 8-1-15 card for the As You Like It bingo fest.


"American Roots"


Francis Bieschke came
to America with dreams of
a place to put down roots.

He settled in Detroit, and
for the next five generations,
nobody moved more than
fifty miles away.

They became a clan,
neighbors scattered
across nearby blocks.

His descendants built
a house on Mitchell Street
where they watched the city
grow and peak and collapse
all around them.

It became a family joke --
"Some people have feet,
we have roots."

Comments

Re: settled families and their people when scattered

[mama_kestrel]

When I was 15 my family (which had moved at least a dozen times in my life by that time) moved back to the city my mother grew up in. It was very strange for me, because suddenly someone would look at me and say "you have Resnick eyes". I'd always been just me, and suddenly I was cousin, niece, granddaughter - 4 generations in a very closely-woven Jewish community.

Re: settled families and their people when scattered

[ysabetwordsmith]

Wow, that does sound disconcerting.

Re: settled families and their people when scattered

[librarygeek]

I have never gotten to see that, the opposite direction of my family. That would be pretty unsettling too! I'm Jewish too, but again division, Mom's side was Reform, Dad's was Conservative. My paternal grandmother was very snippy about being surprised that Mom could actually read the Hebrew and knew the prayers better than my dyslexic father. I have my dad's eyes, which were his mother's, and are now also my daughter's. :-)