Heirloom Poem by Gerard Smyth

Among family heirlooms

I find a postcard written on a voyage

to America: the barely legible last goodbye

of a steamship emigrant.



I imagine him, my ancestor

on the journey west: homesick, heartstruck.

Like a fledgling thrown from the nest

to take a chance

under Liberty's raised right hand.



I imagine him, sad to leave his bogbanks,

grassland, the sound of the latch,

but ready to seek with rolled-up sleeves

the better life in Queens, the Bronx,

in streets with their entourage,

streets that spawned hard tasks.