At Ellis Island,
Clerk read Franz Rurka's Czech tag
-wrote down Frank Robbins.
Grandpa showed bookshelf,
Where he kept family tree
-we looked at the lines:
Some back to Ellis Island,
Others back to Mayflower!
Copyright©2009
One Single Impression: Assimilation
15 comments:
Beautiful poem..simple, unique and elegantly done.. I love your work!
Delightful melting of seriousness, respect and wry humour!
I loved the second one.
poignant.
A very common tale, that first one.
reaching into the past to imagine, assimilate what was and how it is related. Nice.
We are not all willing subjects in this process!
I wonder how many times that first one happened...I really enjoyed both of these!
Ah, forced assimilation. I have several relatives who went through the same name-change process at Ellis Island.
You are as good as ever!
stolen from the air
Enjoyable read
Your post is very personal to me. My father underwent the same nceremonious name change at Ellis Island. I talk about it in my current OSI offering.
What does a name carry?
clarification: unceremonious
A great assimilation plot...
Very nice, Edward. I like your assimilation of family history in brief poetic form here. We should all know as much about our families as we can and should be ready to pass our knowledge on.
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My relative but not an ancestor of Dad came on the Mayflower (Moses Fletcher--my ancestors, his cousins, came on a couple of boats later. Moses had died before the writing we have.)
The other side of Dad's family entered via New Orleans from Germany.
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