The “Intangible Inheritance” prompt immediately struck me as something that I, in my 93rd year, wonder about. I’m fairly sure how my children and grandchildren will remember me. I leave behind long years of personal association with them. But great-grandchildren are simply separated by time and frailty into a gulf that cannot be crossed. So what dim impression of me might linger with them?
Almost Ancestral
My great grandsons know me
as the silent watcher,
too fragile for their childhood tussles,
whose love is mostly smiles
and toys tainted with instruction.
They’ll recall me as a shadow
that passed briefly through their lives
so long ago as to be mythical.
Perhaps an object will appear, explained
as from your great grandma.
The density of time escapes them,
attached as they are to the instant.
Their lives brim with days newly cut
from the fabric of the present. For them,
I recede into the ancestral past.
Sharon Scholl is a retired college teacher who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website (freeprintmusic.com) which donates music to small, liberal churches. Her poetry collections, Remains, Seasons, Classifieds, Ghosts, are available via Amazon Books. Her poems are current in Rattle and Red Rose, Thorns.
The Zingara Project 
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