Aylee

By John I. Blair

Your parents John and Ann
Grin at me or grimly frown
(It doesn’t really matter which)
Across the years
From either side, ancestors
Of both my mother and my father;

You and your brother Thomas
Therefore are the buttresses
Of an imaginary bridge
That arches over all the oaks
And pines of Carolina,
Spans the rocky chasms

Of the Appalachians,
The blue Ohio, Mississippi
And Missouri,
Endless cornfields, prairies --
A viaduct across ten thousand
Bustling city streets,

Me its center point at last,
Me and half a million others, cousins,
Me a cousin to myself I guess.

©2012 John I. Blair

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