I can’t say this was material I discovered as I wrote it; I had pondered for years the mysteries of ancestry and subjectivity the poem takes up. But after an earlier flawed attempt, in this version I discovered how to make the poem work. The ekphrastic approach allowed me to ground my imaginings in something I could describe concretely, while still highlighting the longing to find myself in an unreachable past.

Anne Myles’s work has appeared in North American Review, Split Rock Review, Gyroscope Review, and other journals. She received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2021. A retired English professor, she is in the process of moving from Iowa to Greensboro, North Carolina.