Yesterday the cat
explained at great length
that we occupy
her house because
she loves us, but that we
dare not take
this status for granted.
I scratched her behind her ears
to signify my agreement
and so she took my simple
act of kindness.
You get another week
she said, purring.
The fado fades
under the weight
of the Highland pipes
and dreams of Cascais
fade into the Scottish sky.
Where once I thought
of wandering Lisbon
looking for my face,
I imagine I see it
in the Grampians, reflected
off the lochs whose
headwaters now feed
my dreams.
One joy of being adopted is that what you imagine is not always what really is. For years, based on what my birth mother told the adoption agency, my father was “a Portuguese Jew.” DNA later showed that I had no Portuguese blood at all, and I doubt my Russell and McDonald paternal ancestors spent much time in Lisbon.
Quantum gravitation,
I strongly suggest,
is something on which
you cannot really count.
I know all things
are supposed
to be relative
but as an only
and adopted child
I have none,
for me relativity
is something special
and generally
the lack weighs heavily.
Quantum gravitation,
I strongly suggest,
is something on which
you cannot really count.
I know all things
are supposed
to be relative
but as an only
and adopted child
I have none,
for me relativity
is something special
and generally
the lack weighs heavily.
Twisted strands
tell a strange story –
acid, a trip you never
intended to take –
amino pairs
that walk you
into a world
that is yours alone
and universal,
a foreign place
you now must
call home.
At some level, he always knew. It was what he hoped, but he had given up hope. He was glad when he was Portuguese, imagined himself on the beach at Estoril or Cascais. Imagination was free and unfettered, and he was a bronze god in those dreams, chiseled of flesh, wanted by all. You don’t imagine yourself short, barrel-chested, hairy and aging, there is no romance in that. He was happily Portuguese. You are happily anything really, after years of being nothing. He knew there was no hope of meeting his father. He knew he saw his father every morning. It was the only reason he considered looking in the mirror. Otherwise he hated mirrors. They refused to lie to him, to bend to his will. Actually they lied all of the time, for he knew the old man he saw wasn’t him, couldn’t be. It didn’t matter, he was finally connected to the land, plucked from the ether of ignorance. He was, in a word, cognito, and this suited him. It was early evening when the word came. You are not what you think. Estoril is a place to go only if you want to feel alien. The streets of Lisbon deny you. Your imagination has betrayed you. But listen, carefully. Do you hear the highland pipes? Do you taste the Talisker, the Oban, do you see the sky from Skye? For this is who you are, the person you always wanted to be but could not. But were. Now about that kilt . . .
The hardest part, surprisingly, is
finding that one odd thread where
you least expected, and following it
back until it merges with another,
and another still until you recognize
that it is a weft, and the warp
slowly becomes more apparent.
Still it is nothing but carefully
interwoven threads until you allow
yourself to step back, and a pattern
appears slowly, growing more clear
as threads are recognized, and
the twisted threads of DNA
eventually reveal a rich tapestry
of the family you never knew,
never expected to know, whose blood
runs through your veins and arteries
and, ungrounded from your long
held beliefs of self, you find
footing in a soil unexpected,
but which touched deeply
does feel so very much like home.
