My Ancestress, a poem

My Ancestress
(New Year’s Eve 2010)

They say she lived in a cave
Dark, likely with bats.
Her mystical, not of this world
And me, practical as dirt.
Yet finally something resonates inside
At the same wavelength
On which she travelled so long ago
And I think the one word
That never sat familiar on my tongue-
Family.

I wonder did they chase her there?
Somehow I doubt it.
A witchy woman is never chased.
She chose her cave.
I see her hair long and tangled
Maybe a cursory look would uncover sticks
Brought from the southern reaches
From where she came
To the icy northern land
In search of freedom.
The opposite trip from mine, though
Exactly identical too.

I’m happy to know that somewhere
In my cellular make-up
A strand of feral, feminine DNA
Untainted and pure,
Hiding in the powerhouse
Of the cells, of my body
Belongs to her.
Perhaps the essence of us both.
I hope.
I wish.

Her bits make me want to look behind
From where I come,
The place I fled.
Where everything was unfamiliar
And strange.
She has sent out a torch light
For me alone, I think
Over generations and time, over distances.
And for the first moment, I am connected
No longer floating untethered.