I have always considered myself a global citizen,
European rather than German
traveled to Ireland, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark
Belgium, The Netherlands, Ibiza, Gran Canaria, and Tenerife.
Transplanted to the United States thirty-one years ago,
not thrilled, rather – unhappy, a stranger in a strange culture
in a country full of misinterpretation and misunderstandings
where invitations to ‘come by’, really don’t mean ‘come in’.
This country is so reluctant to embrace foreign languages,
yet it researches its ancestry with a diligence
that’s incomprehensibile and unfamiliar to me
– or anyone in Europe for that matter.
We know we are a mixed race
it’s obvious and there is no need
to document the obvious
although the Third Reich mandated it.
Perhaps that is why we are so reluctant
to go back through centuries,
to revisit our families,
their joy and pain and sorrow.
I know that my paternal family
reaches all the way back before the 15th century,
my ancestors were French, Italian, Hungarian
on my father’s side, and Polish on my mother’s.
Huguenots forced to leave France
for fear of finding themselves on the guillotine.
They left their castles and fled to Italy, then Hungary
and were converted to the faith from which they had fled.
Some day I hope to visit Chateau Gomber
in the south of France, near Provence,
where I lost my soul so many years ago
and my love of Lavender was born.
Living globally to me means
to broaden my horizon beyond
the curve of the earth,
to be open to others, regardless of race, language, or heritage.
Hiking Poet 