By Cassandra VanGarrick Crews

While searching family history
it just occurred to me
That someday I too will be
A tag on someone’s tree
A name on someone’s pedigree chart
With all my “whens” and “wheres”
Mere glimpses cannot show the heart
Or what I leave my heirs
The curly hair upon a head
A begetter’s dimpled chin
A grandmother’s crown of crimson red
Are not displayed within.
Eager descendents carefully trace
along the connecting lines
reading each name correctly placed
the lineage so deftly defined
Ancestors dwindling back and back
branches on a sire-sown tree
A kindred map to easily track
Just how they came to be
My hope is that when they get to me
They take time to consider the rest
Of how I lived and where they’d be
If I hadn’t made my nest