My History (For My Children's Children)

I am documenting my history

in verse and song just in case 

I am too feeble minded 

to remember these things when I grow old.

Perhaps someday my children

or my children's children

will sit by my bedside

and read me my poems

helping me unwrap dusty old visions

in one final appreciation of great loves 

long forgotten in dark corners 

of a mind going quiet.

Perhaps I'll look at my children

or my children's children

and tell them I have no desire

to relive a life's worth of sadness 

and die again before I die.

Perhaps I'll look at my children

or my children's children

with no memory of any of it

and ask them to turn on the ball game.

Either way

someone will inherit my memories 

and place them on the family book shelf

where history goes to age unnoticed.

Ken Owen   Van Niddy Press   February 2015