Home Safe and Sound
Happy to report that we Millerstead kindredfolk
have returned to come home ashore our island again.
Home safe and sound, hale and whole, young and old, high and low,
after a two week stay in an Etinhome called the USA.
To the kin's odal we fared over sea, over land and upon the air,
Through a gauntlet we slipped beneath the gaze of the state,
Past warriors both seen and unseen, to where
Five generations of Miller-folk live and have died on our own hallowed
ground.
To find that our family is both broad and is deep and spreads wide
across that strange outland,
They all fared well and so far to swell by the lake to nearly a hundred,
Sixteen of whom found themselves there being under their fifth year of
age,
With a good range through to those two still standing and are now well
into their eighties.
Old bikers and pilots and agents and preachers sat feasting with our
heathen kindred,
Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Heathens, merchants and
lawyers, doctors, artists, warriors, peaceniks and kids,
I hailed our ancestors whose hard work and sacrifice only made sure all
were there,
in a grove of mighty old oak trees where the lightening so often had
struck.
Where generations of kinsmen have first crawled then walked,
lived and grew eld and expired.
My grandfather's grandfather's family helped build,
then my grandmother's grandmother's family had dwelt in the
hall unware their families would mix in their grandkids.
Now my son and his cousins and kinfolk still play by the
lake as kids have done near to ever,
There I stood with my breath took away when now after
twenty years I had returned.
So I worked and split blood and spilt tears and spilt sweat on the
earth and the wood by the water.
Beer I gave to old Wingthor and landwights and
disir and all the old ancestor spirits,
Love did I give to our kinsmen in frithgard our differences
all on the side.
A hefty Horned Owl I carved in an oak stump
three paces away from the hall,
and greeted I each one and every one kinsmen
who came to gang at the feast altogether.
Now that mighty oak owl will look ever to the west,
where I dwell and I will remember,
and my name will be spoken with honour and loving from
kinfolk north south east and west.
My grandmother owner of that dear place has decided to
leave it in the last to the siblings,
Preserved and protected will we keep it ever so
long as we draw our breaths.
Hale and whole she still sits in the high seat and
and looks proudly at the breadth of our family,
and live and live long with the love and respect we are
only too happy to give her.
This oath I do swear before kinsmen and kithfolk and
ancestors and to all my Gods,
To return there I must by the year always and ever to
gang with the folk by the lake.
Though mansions abound where oak trees once stood
as far as they eye could then see,
Our corner of forest at beach of the lake
remains as it has been for a hundred good years,
a place where the old folks and young folks can play and can gather,
a peace yard, a frithgard, a homeland for all of our kinsmen.
May it last another hundred of summers
like the very one I just saw there.
Like the oak trees slow and steady,
Like the Owl so old and so wise,
Like the children so full of hope and surprise.
In troth,
Dan Ralph Miller
August, 2004
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