One if my favourites of Sheila's poems, she was born a Thompson and this one sums up 200 years of it's history.....
TOM’S SONS
Today we have a family reunion.
Australian Tom, just two, peers solemnly
around the table. Delightfully dark-eyed,
high-browed, his jutting chin still daubed with lunch
(he’s caught on camera by his great-aunt Melva) -
the latest in a line of Thompson males.
We open the Victorian family album,
leather-bound, gilt-edged with metal lock.
Our patriarch glares, in cardboard pose,
bewhiskered, button-holed and bowler-hatted,
Thomas Harris Thompson, with Thomas Harris jnr,
only son and heir. Remembered history starts here.
He died soon after his son John (my father
Jack) was married. Jack, aged four, scowls from
a mop of curls, in petticoats, though
later sailor-suited, starched and straight.
Those solemn eyes and forthright chin,
pervadingly familiar, stare above
a soldier’s uniform in World War I.
Dark days of war again and his son Dave
is born. Few photos now until I snap
him gunning down the birds, that chin squared up
with tumbling hair and narrowed eyes that glint.
In colour next, his son, again a one and only,
Sheridan (no Harris) proudly held by Granny T
(too late for Jack, who died that year).
And now, a new millennium sees six
young men descended from old THT.
The most direct in line is Harris (Harry),
nearly three, in Sydney, with the same wide eyes
and penetrating gaze, and stubborn chin.
His cousin Tom meanwhile is digitally
disembodied, almost instantly transmitted,
reassembled as a world-wide print-out
for the clan to marvel, recognise and bin,
for family records now need constant update.
Will anyone in future care for treasures piled
in boxes for so long? Photographs and cuttings,
locks of hair and wedding cake, invitations,
funeral cards? Will Thomas, Harris, Reuben,
Guillym, Bran or John? I need to know!
SHEILA MADDOCK
2001
David
31st August 2015