Driving South

Driving down to visit my new grandson,

highway driving, mostly, on I-95 south,

cutting across New York’s Big Apple City,

with its glitz and glitter, and around the nation’s capital,

a city troubled by its own political aims,

a long drive fighting the weather and roads.

This long journey began not here, though, not today,

but at Banbury Cross, England under Elizabethan reign,

began with a tailor’s Puritan son, dissatisfied at home

and leaving for a new world, yet he was left behind in dying,

sending on, instead, his sons, who gave us our start,

our roots running deep, generations passed down to me

fighting the traffic stalled bumper to bumper,

crawling along, too slow, or flowing fast, speeding by,

them by me and me by them in my haste to arrive.

But this journey never ends, lasts forever, really,

goes onward into eternity, carrying with it

the genes of generations past, genes begun

at Banbury Cross, a tailor’s son, dissatisfied,

our lives, now, but an extension of his carried

down through the generations, just as I drive now

to visit my new grandson beginning his own journey,

heading into this same eternity to make his own way,

guided by us who have traveled before him

to bring ourselves to where we are now, here, today,

arriving and rooted deep, generations passing down to him,

and carrying us onward, onward into eternity.