ancestors magpie guide us 040507 ... ovenbird The guidebook says I will find the grave in the woods. I walk time’s endless switchbacks searching for the finality of granite but find only mud, too soft and ephemeral to hold a chiseled date. If I can find her resting place I might know who I am. The trail doubles back on itself and I find nothing but my own footprints. I haven’t recorded a single word in the lined notebook I brought to record the details of my awakening. I give up and return to my car, and there, where the gravel meets the conifers, a tombstone rises from the mossy earth. Upon its face, a single date: 1864. I write it down, this cipher I’ve waited all my life to find, then stand, unchanged, in the half-light, spit out by a past that breaks all its promises, my feet above the bones of my great-great grandmother, who has no way to know me. I am nothing. Not even the birds know how to sing my name. 251214 what's it to you? who go blather from