POEM: On memory, love, and the richness of ancestry

July 7, 2026

By Patricia Ranzoni

IN THEIR DUST

So rich is the soil with the crumbling bones

of our ancestors…it has been difficult of late

to find six feet of earth not preempted by these pioneers.

—The Gray Family of Hancock County, 1903

1.

        Claim the dust now do you?

No. I go to my knees to the tribes

in whose dust we are hateful specks.

Not that forgiveness is possible

but bowing to the record showing

some old love too, between us.

I shall go back to wherever we’re from

however far needed to know. I will dance

in your dust wherever we were, walk grounds

and by waters named for you.

And with feet bared that we might touch,

remembering who we are. Rub

your remains to my skin and in that

recognition believe we go on. Touch

your dust to my tongue to receive

what you would have me say.

When I am finished hope to find

I have become you.

II.

Out of the question to bring a best teapot

to steep on biscuitwood heat

of brook alder, the taste taking her back

to British beginnings. Or fanciful lace

if only a piece to wear for good or show                               

on a shelf or save in a chest. Separatist.

Exile. Prisoner of conscience to this day.

Still I know she thrilled at the wildness

as much as she wept for the missing

humming Old Country songs at work.

How I want her to have admired the First Ones

hoping her young would be as earthly wise.

To have persuaded her husband to settle peaceably

and taught their children to honor the tribes.

I see her with frugal habits making her way 

down the years to me, gardens staked

against deer and coon, putting by pork in brine

against winters that would test to the core.

She must have lost children to distance

and not knowing and known pain

of a kind gone with time. Must have danced

in delight for good greens and trout

and whatever mountains and meadows

heaved up each spring.

From my grandmother and mother

and stories of theirs I’d say she lived

in and out of the generations as splendid

as a woman could be, making the way easier

for those of us to come

before turning to soil each time. It’s not

without applause that I revere

the very dust of this place.

—Ranzoni was Bucksport’s poet laureate from 2014 to 2025.

The Rising Tide welcomes poems and other artistic endeavors from our community, and showcases them here in our “Create” section. If you have something you’d like to submit—a poem, a picture of a painting, a photograph, a music recording—send it to info@risingtide.media. We’d love to publish it and give you an audience for your creativity.