A Common Ancestry

A Common Ancestry

Fallen-away, dispossessed descendants
of out-croppings, mountains,
how they have come down!
The least of them

lying beside rivers
put to the homeliest of uses,
footrests for swimmers,
fishermen, idlers,

the rough-edged perverted to missiles
or, worn to smoothness,
thumbed and read as talismans;
ignorant of their quarried ancestors,

cathedrals, temples, palaces,
even of those raised up
from fields to assume the shape
of cottages,

they are the low-lifes,
stepped on, stepped over,
overlooked until, intrusive,
shaken from a sandal.

However briefly bird-like,
skimmed, skipping over water,
the one unchanging
link to family, gravitas, will tell.