To Henry Browning, On The Hendricks Poets Legacy

Daughter of the poet,

the bard of mountain folk,

I read the work he left behind

inked ghosts breathing through my hands.

Editor, poetess, archivist of his soul,

I bound his voice in amber

so time could not erase him,

so Henry might someday hear him.

His name is a cathedral;

mine, a whisper caught in the pews.

I edited his thunder,

while my own voice starved in the margins.

How does a daughter sing

when her father’s song still fills the valley,

when every echo answers in his name?

I scatter crumbs across the digital dark,

hashtags like lanterns on a moor,

breadcrumbs for a grandson

held in the cold discipline of no contact,

great-grandson, grandson of poets

who may never know the river he descends from.

I never thought I would walk this path:

custodian of legacy,

calling across a silence not of my making,

lighthouse for a future I may never see.

I am the holder of my father’s words,

the keeper of his flame.

His ballast, he called me,

the weight that steadied his vessel

against the storm.

And still, quietly, I am becoming myself.

In the margins of his manuscripts,

in the white spaces between his lines,

my own voice rises,

a daughter’s prayer,

that Henry will find us,

and read,

and know

he was always loved.

#henrybrowning #JohnThendricks #poets