Ancestral Dance

Glen Sorestad
From:   Leaving Holds Me Here: Selected Poems. Thistledown Press, 2001.

The violin my grandfather
staunchly called a fiddle
but refused to play for us
held for him some magic link
with the man he was.

Left at home alone when we
were safely distant for the day
he'd uncase the fiddle,
rosin the bow with trembling fingers.

Caught in the mystery of the past
he delayed death, bowed the fragments
of a life that was always private,
even on a crowded dancefloor.

In the gathering silence
of seventy years
with fumbling recall he
became the dance.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Glen Sorestad's works copyright © to the author.