The Blood-Tie
My grandfather lifted my grandmother up
from where she clung to stones in the dank shaft
of the well, he clinging to the rope, his small body
fear-hardened, lifted with a furious grip
up from the ice-black water her who held in one arm
their son and only child yet, first-born with
honey curls, toddler in a white dress, baby boy
who had fallen there where the packed stones’ moss
was barely green in filtered light, where
water-singing had drawn him, while above their heads
the sky was a blue, bitten wafer; lifted her up,
arms welding the shrieking child to her breast,
his life theirs, and heaviest, yet light
as the caught stars in her Cherokee hair,
its stout trunk wound in his fist:
lifted up by the thousand roots,
sinew, vessel, bone and gene, the million
filaments, the blood-tie.
in Louisiana Literature
& in The Mind’s Eye (textbook), Kevin Clark, Longman, 2008
& in Color Documentary