This is dedicated to my genealogist husband:

At family gatherings you collect them,
Names, dates, distant memories, pictures of people long passed,
Quickly, carefully – before they scatter with the winds of time.
Dried leaves, rattling across the roads that once were farms.

Collected and catalogued, they accumulate, almost palpable,
Percolating, like coffee on an ancient cookstove.
Just beneath the motes and swirls of day to day dust,
as fertile as compost in a long forgotten cornfield

Finally, the congregation is assembled, drawn together
Once again with the places that gave them life.
To anyone else, just old photos, dates and maps.
To you, the family – gathering.

Inspired by #77 Sunday Scribblings – Collector Personality