Concealing A Wisdom Poem by Danny Draper

My grandparents were already gone
or passed when I was young.
My Mother passed and then my Father
when I was in my thirties.
Parental links all severed,
Totemic life blood extinguished,
Sib voices and histories silent,
Reluctant mantle of deeper surreal adulthood
and customs activated,
Unwitting custodian of fragmented oral artefacts,
Unimagined responsibility bestowed,
Free falling without backup, no deferral,
Suddenly alone as a lost child,
Generational baton, transferred.

Our children grow and furtively
We descend as hapless elders,
Blissfully ignorant of impending contempt
from unborn descendants,
Edge inexorably towards extinction,
Generationally obsolete;
Concealing a wisdom of the ages.