The blood that courses through my veins
has been diluted. I can sense
its former potency at times:
remembering my father’s strength,
my great-grand sire’s blind wandering
(which was itself a pale claret
compared to further back in time
when his ancestors sought freedom
in the New World, alone and broke),
the continents and oceans crossed
in times of war, in famine’s peace,
must have required more courage,
gumption, even, than I now possess.
Your plasma, too, is watered down:
in veins passed down from one who preached
the merits of peyote worship
to the Great White Father in the East,
and made the exodus, on foot,
from Canada’s Acadia
down to the Deep South’s draining heat.
How weak the strain our genes might mix:
like royal hemophiliacs,
or hypochondriac offspring
that dare not risk a paper cut,
or need a day of rest to cure
a sniffle, or a broken nail.
21 JUL 2005
