<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Ancestor Dreams<\/strong><\/p>\n They gather where the river forms an ox-bow lake. And then we putter into view.. Some I recognise from old pictures \u2013 I epitomise respect.\u00a0 All I want is one brief wave, <\/p>\n David Lukens<\/strong> lives in Wiltshire and has worked in teaching, business and information technology. He has written novels for young adults and poetry which has been published in a number of magazines and online.\u00a0 Going too Far<\/em> is available on Kindle here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ancestor Dreams They gather where the river forms an ox-bow lake. Old men with beards as big as bushes, women aproned, busy in their starched mob caps. Folk who use the muscle of their faith to uproot trees by hand, impel the earth to bring forth fruit to glorify God\u2019s name. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10851"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10853,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10851\/revisions\/10853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOld men with beards as big as bushes, women
\naproned, busy in their starched mob caps.
\nFolk who use the muscle of their faith
\nto uproot trees by hand, impel the earth
\nto bring forth fruit to glorify God\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
\na scattering of boats, our outboards drumming up
\na froth, the wavelets arrowing astern.
\nRight foot braced against the gunwale,
\nI scour the faces for signs of family
\na lobeless ear, or a widows peak.<\/p>\n
\nIsaiah, son of Seneca, who manufactured clocks
\nbefore he recognised a greater need for guns.
\nOld John, the state surveyor, who covered miles
\nat walking pace, each blade of scrub recorded
\nuntil the stubborn land was broken by his map.<\/p>\n
\nsome sign of interest in who we are
\nbut it\u2019s as though they look right through us.
\nTheir stares are palpable, gathering in our wake
\nlike a following wind. The river curls back round
\nto meet itself.\u00a0\u00a0 We push against the widening stream.<\/p>\n