Stand Sure

[This week at Read Write Poem we were challenged to be a tree. Check out what other folks came up with here. And you can check on some tree poems I wrote before here and here and here. But today, I came up with something a little different. And for the record, in our family Loni is pronounced with a long "O" like lonely without the second "L".]











Stand Sure

My mother's mother's mother died
when Gramma was still little.
I don't know much about her
except from family stories and
one other thing. Great-Grandma Loni
was an Anderson.

When Gramma talked about the Andersons, she
meant Claude or Eva, or Pearl,
or Cousin Radah.
But before they were Midwest farmers,
the Andersons came from Scotland.

Midwest Loni didn't know
the Andersons' motto is "Stand Sure."
Farmer's Wife Loni didn't know the crest
is a great oak tree.
But I do.

I hold the Anderson crest pin and
my spine straightens
and my feet fit closer to the ground.
No bend-with-the-wind
willow for us.
We brace ourselves instead.

We stand firmly planted
as the four giant feet
of Paul Bunyan's big blue ox,
or the perfect anchor on
a tug-of-war team.

The oak's roots go deep, so maybe those are
buttery shortbread crumbs
in my pockets, and maybe those are
Scotch eggs lining my arteries.
My fifth-grade oboe didn't squeak,
it was the skirl of my ancestral bagpipe.





[You can find more info on Clan Anderson's symbols here, or check out the mottos for other clans here.]