While Lamar Alexander declared his virtual reality intent to run for US President on the Internet, the rest of the year passed blessedly peacefully, marking the hundredth year since Jacob decided he wanted to cross the ocean. That Christmas, Sunny received a special gift from Victory. It was her grandfather Jacob's Welsh bible, the last vestige of the sire who started the whole family. She sat at the worn desk that had carried her through her childhood, the bright sun turning the old wood gold, dust sparkling in wispy angels rising from the wood, writing at her computer in the journal she had kept since she was small, first in notebooks, then on a typewriter, now on disk. With Fatkitty curled up by the keyboard, and Grant perched in her lap, she thought a long time, carefully unwrapping the black cloth the bible had traveled in, thumbing through the fragile book, of all the different people in her life, and all the different souls that made up of the tree of Saers, then wrote a tribute to him to celebrate his life and his family.
Inheritance
Duw! buost in yn Arglwydd da,
Ac yn breswylfa i drigo;
- Psalm XC:1,2
This bible has descended
from daylight into the night
into the cold
into the dust
of a mine, gripped by a man
suited in black
who wore a lamp bound to his brow
that spattered shadows
against the coal that caged him.
In silence he read by the light
forsaking bread for those words
for this book, which he held over stagnant waters
that flooded the floor of the tunnel
that stained his feet.
This bible was tied to a bouquet of lilies
by ribbons that streamed
into the folds of my Grandmother's satin.
Upon this book two hands lay joined.
Opened by a man draped in robes,
surrounded by candles, the book was lifted
and from it words were sung:
"Drink this, in remembrance of me."
And in the shadow of the book,
in the silence of a chapel,
a vow was sworn.
This bible was packed in a suitcase,
squeezed between longfellow and poe,
jostled in darkness among them,
shipped to the South,
to be pulled from the folds of a quilt
with the letters
with the documents
with the photographs
that surrounded it.
Today I walk holding this bible into the Spring
and close my eyes
and hear the Welsh words
recited in the baritone
whose resonance rolls through me
and open my eyes, dazzled by sunlight
and stare at words I can almost read.
I turn to the beginning
and find the inscription Grandfather penned
in fragile script that flows across the page:
"This is my faith, which I cherished for you.
Live this, in remembrance of me."