1.
On the skyline beyond our stream those trees,
I'm told, mark graves long vanished,
the stones gone to make gate-posts,
flesh and bones gone to seed, reaped.
Maybe they're all forgotten, though I doubt it.
Someone, somewhere, turns up a little box
of rusted icing, like this one here,
or photographs of legendary folk, whose traits
said to live on in child or grandchild now
emerge for good or ill in the new born.
I haven't met the people who might remember.
But these, these relics, my own history,
brown photos of the dead, a shaky outline
of "Baby's foot, aged one" (my mother's),
a pressed leaf, letters not telling much,
one even now unopened, sixty years later-
...