Hunger Lines

Irish Famine Ancestors

My daughter tracks our DNA 
through spit in a tube,
while I trace it through the hollow
of her cheekbones, the way
her jaw sets against bad news — 
pure MacPherson, pure Cork,
pure hunger made flesh.

Great-great grandmother Catherine
walked from Skibbereen to Glasgow,
her feet mapping famine roads,
each step a prayer of stones.
They say she carried potatoes
in her pockets, gone to black dust
by the time she reached Scotland,
but her fingers never forgot
the shape of them, whole and heavy
as hope in the spring.

Now my girl tends her Glasgow garden,
plants heritage spuds in drills
straight as her spine, straight
as the lines between then and now,
between what was lost
and what survives.

Each harvest, she blesses the dirt
under her nails, black as peat,
black as her ancestors’ dreams
of food that would last.