A Generational Tale
One tired old century closes - A new one begins.
Fire, war, and pestilence sweep over the land,
Causing great cries of anguish, for all in its path.
Why me? They ask. Because it is, my dear — it is.
Misfortune, with its companion Melancholy,
Pass their way down through the ages,
Mysteriously, onto the next generation.
Hidden, unknowingly in each descendent,
It swarms about them, ready to strike,
Consume their very soul, and take them
Through that dark passage of bleakness,
Ending sadly, in final surrender.
Even the Best and the Brightest,
Yield to mind numbing chemicals,
To stumble their way forward.
They, with analytical, scientific minds,
Easily dismiss proper medical care,
To hasten their - Destiny of Despair.
A long established lumber merchant proprietor,
Surveys the vast, leveled plain of smoldering
February embers of the Great Baltimore Fire.
Thankful, that his cooperage business yard,
Fell blocks short of the creeping burn-line.
But his thoughts drift like smoke to his fire
Ravaged customers and raw material suppliers.
Anticipated financial losses were unbearable.
Body stress soon gave way to foreboding anxiety.
Thirty years of hard dedication, decimated by
Collateral damage from a pernicious inferno.
Four months of brooding and spreading cancer
Are too much for the ex-West Virginian, as he is
Laid to rest on a peaceful summer June day.
Leaving behind a wife and son, each destined
For sudden death, within a 24-hour period.
A Great-Grandson walks the once bloody ground,
Whereby an ancestral warrior fought to preserve a Union.
Suddenly, a presence bloomed in the tramper’s soul.
His steps, are now that of the intrepid soldier’s steps,
Whose forced night march filed past torchlit corpses,
Bodies of once brave young men who that morning,
Had charged an impenetrable salient, earthen wall,
Defended by armed men clothed in dusty gray.
That traumatic vision for the 19-year-old soldier,
Would stay with him for his remaining 64 years,
Soul-etched, like his stone carved gravestone,
— “A Civil War Veteran” —
A loving mother of three, watches with concern,
As family members are each struck down with
A deadly, indiscriminate, influenza outbreak.
A dear husband of twelve years passes first,
The next day, her husband’s mother, then,
Eleven days later, a darling daughter of five years.
She survives with an irreparable broken heart,
Carries on for 32 more years to kiss her grandson
Goodbye, who will walk in her father’s footsteps.
Thus begat genetic memory links of trauma,
Genome embedded, part of a collective
Unconscious of feelings, absent of direct
Sensory experience in the receiver, lasting
Across multiple generations of descendants.
But someone, in that genetic chain of humanity,
Must standup, as a resurrected Warrior All Mighty,
To fight back, that viral madness of Forlorn
Hopelessness — Stop it in its tracks, from
Inexorably marching onward, well past,
The faded memory, of his dauntless deeds.
To YOU, the last one standing:
Oh my, my - how hard it is, to watch tired faces,
Hear the craggy voices, of old acquaintances,
Weathered down, worn thin, and so soon forgot,
Drift silently away, into that long, lonely, dark night.
___________________________________________________________________________________
D W Orr
Environmentalist, Weimaraner/Dachshund Companion, Photographer, and Poet-Provocateur
Harford County, Maryland,
Here, where it all began, 256 years ago, in the USA
June 22, 2025
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
To learn more about epigenetics:
Scientific American, July 2022
The Guardian, June 2024
Nathan E. Alexander
“An Ancestral Warrior” at age 73
“A Civil War Veteran”
1st Sergeant
Co. B, 4th MD Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division, 5th Corps
Major Battles: Wilderness, Laurel Hill, Spotsylvania, Harris Farm, North Anna, Totopotomy, Cold Harbor, Bethesda Church, Petersburg, Hatcher's Run, Weldon Railroad, Five Forks.
Spotsylvania battlefield area in April 1866. Confederate earthworks with abatis.
Battle of Spotsylvania by Thure de Thulstrup.
Mule Shoe Salient known as the “Bloody Angle”.
Fighting, including Harris Farm, occurred on
and off from May 8 through May 21, 1864.
Part of area destroyed by the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.
Maryland Casualty Tower in background (circa 1920).
Map of Devastation - Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.
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The Poet-Provocateur
”The Man who sees well beyond the day-to-day Bullshit”
~ D. W. Orr
“To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one”
~ John Ruskin