Tracing Ancestry #1

Tracing ancestry is a bit of scientific fact and a lot of myth. What is most true, can be called memory.

Tracing Ancestry #2

Tracing ancestry is about leaving room for what is.

Tracing Ancestry #3

Tracing ancestry is about making do with whatever we have left.

Tracing Ancestry #4

I know that free black women from whom

I have been given this blood, have lived here.

Those who have moved on

still call this place home.

Tracing Ancestry #5

We research.

We travel to a place

someone called home.

Tracing Ancestry #6

When the line begins to fade,

we fill it in with negetaive space.

Tracing Ancestry #7

When I drive into Warrenton,

I realize that there is no sense of pilgrimage

for this home going, just an arrivala shrug of, here I am.

Tracing Ancestry #8

The here I am of my mother who was the only cousin that could not pass for white at the movie theater.

Tracing Ancestry #9

The here I am of my great-grandfather

going off to vote,

and my great-grandmother

worried for his life

back home on the farm.

Tacing Ancestty #10

Another Here I am.

Tracing Ancestry #11

It can never be for nostalgia's sake

Nostalgia is a lie that does not make room

for the loss of ancestry.

Bettina Judd

Tracing Ancestry