The Elder

I climb the paths the Estian winds have carved through,

the angry hills of my orphaned civility

I come upon an Elder Tree,

It bends stoically as it battles the voices of the past on the winds unrepentant change

I ask, the Elder,

“Can you speak to me of your roots, your lineage”?

It sings its reply, in whispers, on the broken strings caught on the sheath of the wind

“Your, fathers, fathers, father and his fathers — mother, in stratigraphic order.

Are you royalty, why have you stepped on my heel”, cries the Elder

“I am many things, what I am becomes only me”, I state

The Elder tree generous in its wisdom bends and I pick from its fruit, I toss the seedlings to the wind,

“I believe you are mistaken, my mothers, mothers, mother and her mothers father in order of precedence, that is why I stepped on your head”

The seedling, sprouts, its bloom, the scent the latreia, of a mother. The balancing of the scales.

In the Ancient Doric tradition, on the Island of Karpathos, the women were and still are the inheritors through the line of their mothers (and fathers). Women were and still have the rights to carry their surnames even upon marriage. Names are passed from mother to daughter. If daughter is not born to a family the son will inherit up and until a daughter is born to him, he must under tradition then give his daughter his mothers name or the name of the women the inheritance was past from. These ancient laws were put into place to protect the women from the losses of war, etc. These unwritten laws are still traditionally upheld. Karpathos is the last matriarchal societies in all of Greece. thus my poem…

Copyright ©. R Tsambounieri Talarantas. May 10, 2020. All Rights Reserved.