Familiar songs from a land not mine, yet linked by genes. Stories told. A time imagined.
But for chance, I would have been a peasant like she was, living in scraggy hills, milking a goat, running over rocks in bare feet, so calloused they never bleed. There would be hungry days and starry nights with the wind for a companion. There would be fear and want and fleeting dreams waiting for my father to return.
After the letter arrives there would be a bumpy ride in a patched-up cart to the train.
With many a look back I would watch the dry, dusty land change into a crowded town with the smell of the sea where a ship waits in the harbor, belching smoke from its black stacks.
I would travel in the stink of the ship’s lowest depths with days of anxiety, heat and cold, hunger and sleepless nights, to reach another shore where life would begin again.
a soft spring day
the family comes together
for a funeral
Contemporary Haibun Online
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4 comments:
It sounds a lot like my family history!
My parentsr had lots of stories about coming to the US from Italy. I've used what they told me and my imagination often in my writing.
Adelaide
__ I mistakenly thought I had left a comment here Addie, in the oops of it all, mayhaps an incorrect key. _m
The most valued word, together.
__ Once... families bonded more rigidly than they do today and memories were always a part of that life, of those that would reMEMBER.
Thanks Doug.
You're right. Families move apart, often separated because of jobs. My father moved us from New Haven to Los Angeles because of work. i left LA because of my husband's job.
Addie
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