It returns most gently assertive --
my awareness of the gift --
when poring through old photos.
Who are these people with their puzzled frowns
or caught in the midst of a laugh
or snapped in awkward poses --
grinning, mugging into the archival lens?
Why, they are my people!
They are me – father, mother, uncles, aunts
and, of course, brother and sisters.
I pause to see symbolic similarities;
I study especially our family sisterhood.
Strong women, standing tall.
Parental posture modeled and proclaimed:
“Stand up straight, slouch not!”
Voice of the matriarch instructing:
“Be proud, not ashamed, of who you are.”
Courage came gifted to the sorority she mothered.
She was truly proud of her quintet --
a secret seldom, if ever, shared aloud.
She bequeathed (to all but her first)
the art of surviving long in life,
vital and vigorous into eighth and ninth decades.
She willed a stalwart spine, morally resolute.
And into the motivational bloodline of her offspring
her love of learning came, DNA-transfused.
These strong-willed, capable, devoted daughters
inherited, as well, generous traits
traced from our father’s fun and cozy warmth.
Attributes emerging in my sisters’ own living replication,
remembered when nostalgic thoughts reach back
to “hear” his stories still stirring us,
his songs still singing to us.
I, too, feel from the mystic photos
the resonance of life evoked from these albums,
and recall faces, recognize voices,
hum tunes and replay memory reels
from when I was nourished upwards from childhood
under the watchful umbrella of sisters.
