"MIXED BLESSINGS" BY MARILYN TERLICH

Every year when I run the Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge I have
some submissions from folks who don't have genealogy blogs yet. So
I try to post their poems here because I want to share what they've
found or, in some cases, written.

Maria Northcote of  the "Genies Down Under" podcasts recommended  
my blog to her fellow Australian Marilyn Terlich and Marilyn has sent along          
this wonderful poem for the Challenge. Enjoy!

                                   Mixed Blessings

We may not live in times gone past but the past is present in us
         when parents search a new-born’s face and finer points discuss.
When we walk a mile in someone’s shoes, we’re in his feet as well,
         and see the world through another’s eyes, whose we cannot tell.


Grandma Kelly’s bunions or Grandpa’s knobbly knees,
         Aunt Em’s squinty eye and very funny sneeze –
We can’t choose our inheritance, what goes in the mix
         is of Frankenstein proportions, nature playing tricks.


 We think we control our destiny, we choose and wisely ponder,
         so much is predetermined as ghostly relations linger.
We’ll never see our progeny a hundred years from now,
         but we’ll be in that time machine and qualities endow.

 We’re a ‘one-off’ composed of thousands, unique and wonderfully made
         of the genes of generations, each one slow to fade.
We’re the sum total of millennia, each whole person, rare,
         for the fire of life within us, is a gift beyond compare.

                                © Marilyn Terlich 2011