It's not just a photo...
it's proof.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear Ancestor,
Your tombstone stands among the rest, neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out on polished, marbled stone.
It reaches out to all who care; it is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist; you died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you in flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse entirely not our own.
Dear Ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago,
Spreads out among the ones you left who would have loved you so.

I wonder how you lived and loved; I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot, and come and visit you.

Walter Butler Palmer