Stones & Birthright
Stones
Elizabeth Rosner
three hundred years ago
or yesterday
I walked on the smooth stones
of a riverbed
grief flowing quietly alongside me and
birds calling to one another
from high treetops above
my head where I couldn't
see anything
this is what I need you to understand
that the grief is part of this scene
it belongs here
and every stone is its own piece
the sharp-edged ones
the cracked and imperfect ones
those shaped like fists or eggs or bones
they speak in the language of the river
I wanted to go naked
into the cold clear water
rinse away every trace
of every moment except
this one but
I didn't
I sat on the sand at the
edge of the water and
listened to every story
over and over
learning again that the truth
follows a path it knows
by heart
Birthright
Elizabeth Rosner
there are no portraits
of ancestors
hanging on my walls
no heirlooms in velvet-lined boxes
my legacy is in my bones
in the grief I wear beneath my skin
a secret that never
goes away but is passed
through the coded messages
of blood and that other
substance we have no name for