Tell Me Tales of History
Tell me tales of history…
More than just the apple tree
Your secrets and your mysteries
Things that no one else can see
How you lived and how you died
But deeper, and how you felt inside
About your mentors and your guides
When you crossed the great divide
Tell me facts, plus your opinion
Good advice that you were given
Ways you lived and your traditions
Tell me all, with no omissions
For you see, I am a record keeper
Keeping track of all believers
Those who lived; and their leaders
Spiritual folks and their healers
Stories lost and stories simple
With my pen, they become official
About the wars and times of civil
People caught within the middle
Landmarks, rivers and the forest
Of the crops you grew in August
Were you hungry or malnourished
Did you get what you were promised
And deeper still, down to your core
Did you seek, did you explore
Was it a risk to open a door
Are things tucked safe under your floor
Through your eyes, I’ll try to see
Hidden locks with hidden keys
Code words slipped into tapestries
Treasures shipped across the seas
I’ll try to listen through your bones
Graveyard strolls among the stones
Foundations left from family homes
All your songs and all your poems
Each detail gives life more focus
Some so small we’d hardly notice
Sifting truth from ones quite bogus
Helps us with our diagnosis
Seeking truth and keeping facts
Preserving precious artifacts
Always strive to be exact
Lives and love and deeds and acts
- Immersion – Souls and Their Seeking - February 25, 2025
- So Many Words - January 1, 2025
- The Loving Peace of Christmas Noise - December 20, 2024
Wouldn’t it be nice to know what their life was like? I like to stroll through old cemeteries and read the epitaphs. Sometimes there is one I can connect with and wait for communication to open with the departed soul. I very much enjoyed your verse, Ralph, you have infused it with compassion which makes it an emotional longing to know. Well done.
Lovely idea for expression and also a depiction of the human state, and all we seek to understand in our all too short stay on earth. Great rhyme and flow Ralph. Excellent work my friend.
Aw how often to close ones eyes and open our ears to listen to those spirits from our pasts. To hear them open up and share how they lived and died in their day. The experiences, losses, plights, wars, deaths, hunger, government treatments, lies and truths, hunger and pain and so much more. We will only find out when we too become ghost’s of our pasts. Well penned my friend, I enjoyed the rhyme, you have that gift. Indeed excellent work Ralph. Very emotional, very longing indeed. To have the ability to unlock all the knowledge from our pasts would be divine.
I love this poem, Ralph. The rhyme and meter is superb, and the subject of history and the past engaging. Well done.