STEPS IN TIME

STEPS IN TIME

Just outside of Zurich I walk
through the childhood home
of my father’s father

Look out across
the still green valley
visit the mountain fresh
swimming hole where
his teeth once chattered

A hundred years seems
as nothing here
as rain runs down the stones
carved with the family name

The church and yard
where they are buried
nears five hundred
and it itself was built
on the ruins of a castle

An hour and a half west of London
we visit the farm where my
mother’s mother played as a child

look out across unchanged fields
to a chalk horse cut into the cliffs
who has not taken a single step
since she left