Seeing, yes, just seeing
ancestors in grandkids
connections in daily life
history just about every
where getting older and
older whole decades long
collection of books and
pictures, painting stories
a complete 3 volume set
whole scholarly life works
commentary and critiques
and so many pictures and
actual trips to real places
copious journal entries in
tall stacks of full notebooks
and notebooks of ancestors
where ancestors are saying,
asking a very hard question
“Is this what it all was for?”
”In your life? In my life? All
their lives, oh, so many lives?”

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.