When my great great grandmother
Crossed the great great sea
There was a child at her hip
And one at her knee.
The sea rocked the boat
And the boat rocked her
And she rocked the baby
With a warm whisper.
But the child went quiet,
Its eyes went dull,
And how she must have wept
In that dark damp hull.
That strange mix of love
As it mingles with horror,
Denial clenching her gut,
Her heart growing sorer.
How cruel of this death
To nip the bud of her line,
Away from the forest,
Away from the pine.
She had seen what they did,
With deaths such as this,
They were thrown overboard,
Lost to the abyss.
She thought of the monsters
In the swirling realm below,
And held her child tighter-
She couldn’t let go.
She looked at the thing
That her child had been.
The days wore on,
And its skin grew thin.
She kissed it grey head,
Caressed its sunken cheek,
And kept the ship’s sailors
From taking a peek.
She tucked little herbs
In the folds of its wrapping,
She held the thing close,
As if, her milk it was lapping.
When they finally arrived
In the land they’d acquired,
She could finally say
Her child had expired.
Only then did she finally
Put the baby to rest,
The first to be buried
On their new hill’s crest.
She must not have known
Her line was now cursed
To carry our dead
Till their bloated bodies burst.
We can’t let go,
We won’t put it to bed,
We toil and terry,
Holding on to what’s dead.
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