Prints

Seeing photos
of ancestors
a century past

is like looking
at your own
fingerprints—

circles 
and lines
you can't 
recognize

until someone else
with a stranger's eye
looks close and says
that's you.

 

Copyright Credit: Joseph Bruchac, "Prints" from Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas. Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Bruchac.  Reprinted by permission of Joseph Bruchac.
Source: Sing: Poetry form the Indigenous Americas (University of Arizona Press, 2011)