Roots Poem by Raymond Farrell

The stone ruins
And the old red brick house
With the sagging barn
And fallen down hen house
Up the Old Kingston Road
Are not where my roots are
They are the place
Where the first foreign offshoots
Sprung up
But exactly where my roots are
I do not know
I know county names
But beyond that
I know little
There is a general understanding
Of a shared cultural background
But the details
Are of the names of forefathers
And no more
Exact locations are unknown
Swept aside by events
That uprooted and destroyed
All trace
Of what had been
A tenuous existence
At best.
In the first place