Emigration Stone

Great grandfather stood like a stone As the ship crossed the horizon To dropp off the world as he knew it His shovel beard, his barrel chest Heaving a little, wordless Letters would come in litters, like little puppies From his lost children, Look at me, look at me, But never bound at his heel in the surly mud. He could use the pages to line his heavy boots Softening the lonely walk behind the plough He could use them to plug the holes Where the rats came, gnawing away at his heritage Loss, tugged at his heart like wool on thorns Few now, to pass the salt, to chide, to praise His saplings gone. The sky a red pyre, bleeding What is a patriarch without a clan?