Roots

You’re entering names into the computer,
a program called Family Tree. Burritts 
and Badgers and Shattucks. How fitting 
that I’m fixing chicken with roots
tonight for dinner. Potatoes and carrots
roasted with onion, garlic, turnips 
grown since the time of Christ
in France (my Alsatian cousins, surname 
Grandil). Carrots, known 5000 years ago 
in Afghanistan, making their way west 
via Moorish invaders and Arab traders
to France and Germany (my Heilman 
ancestors). Potatoes traveled to Europe 
from Peru. The Irish lived on potatoes
and I’m told I have a drop of Irish blood. 
Garlic to ward off vampires, protect 
from Plague, and lower blood pressure. 
My Mayflower forebears, the Brewsters, 
Tilleys, Howlands knew it well. They 
brought onions, too, but found those 
roots everywhere in the New World
growing wild.
		
And so we arrive at dinner, 
a hodge-podge, if you will. 
But fragrant! I open the oven 
and bring out the chicken, 
perfectly golden-crisp on its bed 
of roots. Outside, black clouds 
threaten a storm. But in here, 
our household clutches 
the warmth of its hearth.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2005



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