Echo

Aiming for originality out of a bundled relic, I live an echo—
background coloring the landscape with accomplishments.
The careful, the daring, the brave who barely survived a deathblow
smallpox or typhoid fever, stowed potatoes and apples in the root cellar of time.

The Greek and Latin scholar played standup to overflow
crowds in the Tennessee churchyard; the ingenue dreamed theatricals while milking the cow;
field of dreams in reverse—the tennis star hoisted trophies above the cornrow;
the hometown humorist-pianist ascended the Bench.

Through the evolutionary art of alchemy that concocts nature-nurture glow,
you physicist, biologist, athlete, historian, professor, surveyor, pharmacist, doctor, author,
teacher, farmer, preacher, lawyer, entrepreneur, two Presidents, you whom I know
through the bloodlines of my past, proclaim our ordained destiny.

Contributors, patriots, stargazers: you I owe
for so many speeches already spoken,
for so many parts already played.
Only a token exclusive remains for me to show.