Not every deed
in the annals of my family

was given an account.
It could not be. But the gospel writers

and eyewitnesses
each translated experience

and recollection to collections
of their own.

I protected as if genocides
were being sprayed from trucks

in the living room and
cessations possessed my hands.

I have planted them in earths
they were not potted in.

The tender greenhouse
became their new home:

soils in life they were never rooted in,
earthenware pots that drain and breathe

and reverse their suffocations.
May I plant you (uncle, aunt,

mother, dad) in a glass-windowed place
that marries sun to shade

so that your oaks may grow,
so we may know?

Tom Gengler began writing poetry in his mid-teens in his home state of Oklahoma. He has had poetry published in Progenitor, Blue Collar Review, Exit 13, The Worcester Review, and forthcoming in Westview. He works in digital art, traditional and alternative-process photography, bronze and plaster and lives in Denver, Colo.