I’m just an ordinary person
coming from the everyday ilk
nothing real fancy about me
plain
born like a mutt
fed upon survival
as far back as the Viking,
called
Bernard the Dane,
they’ve said
invading Normandy and then
as a Beaumont to conquer England
later fleeing to Scotland, only too
fight in the War of Independence
alongside Bruce,
as a lowland family
descending overtime, becoming
the Hamilton’s of Cambuskeith
1729 was the year, Glasgow the port
a ship called Diligence,
my ancestors
left for a so-called New World
eventually,
docking at some place
a part of New Jersey, my ancestors
headed to the wilderness
from there
planting roots
in northwest Pennsylvania
cleared and then farmed the land
while being some sort of Indian fighter
fought in the French and Indian
and the Revolutionary wars,
overtime
becoming Americans,
later expanding
to Michigan and beyond,
marrying into
the Germans, the Polish, the Irish
the Swedish, the English, the French
the Canadians, the Chippewa and so on
All making my spirit within
about everyday
common, the family, freedom
equality
and the rights of the individual
inspiring my words as a poet,
born from
normalcy,
the struggle over oppression
servitude, persecution,
poverty and death
to speak out, to defend,
to remember
to honor,
all those who came before me
and all those
that will follow thereafter
as to them being just them
and me being
just me,
ordinarily and commonly,
being of
the everyday ilk, a Hamilton
peace out
Words by ~Keith Alan Hamilton~