Tigers die and leave their skins;
people die and leave their names.
	~Japanese Proverb

The more relatives I unearthed,
the more Franks rose to the surface
like deer bones after a storm.
On the trails I could follow,
I found seven named Frank, 
three Franz, three Francis.
Frans, Francois, and Franciscus.
Frances and Francisca,
the women peeking out 
from under their fathers’ names.
The name passed forward
like a cross polished by many hands.
The verb frank means to allow free passage 
for man or post. But these Franks
and Franciskas paid with their labor
and their babes buried along the way.

A table big enough to hold the family of seven 
and several drop-ins for roast and roots.
A pine table glazed dark, its heaviness offset
by burns and holes made by the boys’ fork tines
when they tried to skewer each other’s hands.
A table that displayed the family Bible brought 
from home and the wild flower sketches and sums
of the children’s schoolwork and Mother’s sewing.
A table now invisible, draped in an old clean sheet.

Last week her husband practiced on a brindle cow.
Now he sterilizes his tools with boiling water.
Under her daughter’s hips she pushes a pillow
that will have to be thrown away later. She 
feels blasphemous praying, but knows the dangers.
The girl’s calf-like legs splayed, and not yet a woman.
She cries piteously, a young animal sacrificed
for the family table. They have little to cut her pain
but the whiskey rag in her mouth and those in her fists.