Hidden Roots Poem by David Harris

In Memory Of My Late Brother
William Verdun Harris
1941 - 2003

Today my mind seemed everywhere,
but on the job, I was doing.
It started in my childhood
and moved into my teenage years
and finally into my adulthood.
Along the way examining the roots
I had laid down all those years ago.
Unfortunately, they were not firm roots
and I drifted from here to there,
my heart never settling in any place I wanted as a home.
Within me, there was a struggle
and I knew not why, then it surfaced
in between the pages of a letter that came from far away.
It told me something
that at first I could not believe,
of how part of my past had been closeted from me.
I knew then where my roots lay
in a land far across the sea.
I travelled to meet my past,
but sadly, before I could cement those hidden roots
they were gone and part of me was taken away.
Now I often wonder what might happen years before
if I had known about those hidden roots.
How different would my life have been?
There is no way of telling
as I learned to late about those roots
and time has now run out.

20 February 2009