Walking with My Delaware Grandfather

Walking home I feel a presence following and realize he is always there that Native man with coal-black-hair who is my grandfather. In my first memories he is present, mostly wordless, resident in the house where I was born. My mother shows him the cleft in my chin identical to his. I am swaddled and blinking in the kitchen light. So we are introduced. We never part. Sometimes I forget he lodges in my house still the bone-house where my heart beats. I carry his mother’s framework a sturdy structure. I learn his birthright. I hear his mother’s teachings through what my mother said of her: She kept a pot of stew on the stove all day for anyone to eat. She never went to church but said you could be a good person anyway. She fed hoboes during the ‘30s, her back porch a regular stop-over. Every person has rights no matter what color. Be respectful. This son of hers, my grandfather, still walks the streets with me. Some twist of blood and heat still spark across the time bridge. Here, listen: Air draws through these lungs made from his. His blood still pulses through this hand.