Ancestral home

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Ancestral home

I mixed a stiff Negroni and drank it as the sun went down.
But as I sipped the bitterness of gin, Campari and vermouth. 
I felt not satisfaction but the wish I’d done more in my youth. 
Would that my father had survived to know what I’d achieved
Once I came into manhood! Would I have pleased?
Perhaps. But how different life would have been
Had he grown old so he could have seen. 

I’d loved to have welcomed him to the place
My wife and I have made together. 
My in-laws bought it not yet fifty years ago.
Their presence still pervades its atmosphere
Though they themselves are now long gone.
This, together with its landscape beauty mean
That, though we’re only second-comers here
We like to think of it as our ancestral home.

Last night I’d dreamed my father had not died
When I was young but had lived to pass his days 
In some country house that half-resembled ours.
The setting looked familiar though it faded all too soon.
It felt intensely real. But in dreams, known and unknown 
Scenes flow together without seams. So you can’t tell. 
I embraced him as we stood upon a lawn. 
It seemed that he had wished to pass it on 
To us so memories of his life too
Would warm us both on winter evenings.
We lingered for a while in order to enjoy the panorama, 
Then he turned toward me and he spoke 
That trite - but to me still moving - phrase, 
‘One of these days my son, this will be yours,’ 
As in a TV costume drama. And then I woke.

Phantoms fill the air. I take another sip of my Negroni.
It’s sad of course, though it would be nice: 
But you can’t inherit the same house twice.
So may his shade join those already there! 
And when my wife and I have gone
And the next generation takes its turn, 
Two families of ancestral spirits
Join in harmony
To bless those 
Yet to come.