Written by Peggy Heitmann
See the way the sun casts
almost no shadows on the hill
where they sit posing?
I am sure someone snapped
the gray and white
picture during summer.
There’s four of them,
my Great Uncle JC
and a woman and two teenage girls.
This family I never knew
smiles at me from a different era—
out of date hair styles,
belted flower dresses,
billowing trousers on JC.
I’m told he lived in Hillsborough,
NC then. Just because
my imagination runs away
with me, I think I hear sparrows
singing in the distance,
smell the sweet peas nearby.
Now after all these years
of living in North Carolina
and those girls’ daddy dead
since 1964, I wonder
if I decide to walk the streets
of Hillsborough knocking
on every door if I could find
those cousins linked to me
so long ago.
.