October 2021
Bio Note: The pandemic has caused a great deal of reflection and the alone time in which to do it. I have appreciated that quite space and the ability to spend more time walking outdoors, through woods, rolling farmland, and along Lake Michigan. School just started and as poetry club advisor I really enjoy hearing the voices of young people. I serve on the board of the Council for Wisconsin Writers and am English language editor for Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bilingual Journal.
Divination
My genetic report arrives like a modern dowser stick to divine ancestors dwelling in my cells did my forbearers thrill to the music of morning birdsong and pass along to me this fresh way of waking the people of my family tree have felt insubstantial as an earthbound cloud but each one of them outlasted pestilence and plague long enough to reproduce home alone for weeks on end I begin to find my lost ancestors those forgotten survivors who fly in on birdsong and dance with bright trees sometimes at dawn I walk along Lake Michigan and keep pace with its rolling rise and fall my breath my mother, and hers
Originally published in An Ariel Anthology
©2021 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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