visiting with a cousin

 my cousin and I

today I visited on Zoom with a cousin,

the youngest child of an uncle and aunt of mine,

his father and my mother were wonderfully close,

my mother was second living daughter in her family,

his father the oldest son,

their mother as warm, and loving, and strong, as I can imagine,

her two younger sisters called my mother "Little Mother,"

for Jean mirrored Grandmother in helping raise the family,

similarly, Alvin worked to be provider, protector,

when the Great Depression broke their father, and he died,

the goal today was to express and record what we could

of the lives of our parents' generation,

of how we in the days we are allowed

hope to be true to the brilliance of their souls,

and to how we might live to honor who they were

and what they hoped for us to be,

my cousin talked of wanting to grow blackberries

to reprise the cobblers he remembered Aunt Jean making at the cabin,

he spoke of the charge he felt to treat others

with the care, and love, and understanding,

he felt his parents taught him

with every fiber of who they were,

each day he described looking back on his day

and hoping he did his best to honor them with his day,

my cousin is still the kid at heart I enjoyed growing up with,

his eyes dance with the memories of his early formative years,

and he seems to feel a solid connection with his younger self,

he is a son who labors to be true to his parents,

I hope to see both of us as true to the best within us,

so that the tomorrows we work to build

are true to the images we have within 

of what our parents hoped for.

by Henry H. Walker

May 18, ‘26