Ancestral Feels

My ancestors are calling me.
From where I am not sure.
I used to think it was from the past. 
Now it feels closer.
Like the next room,
or a parallel room. 

I didn’t have ancestors growing up.
I had Grannies and Granddas and Uncles and Aunties.
Beyond my Granny and Grandda’s Ma and Da was a blurry shimmer of unknown people, a crowd behind frosted glass.
Back then my ancestors were covered in semi-detached houses and concrete,
and we didn’t need them anyway.

We were urban dwellers.
We looked forward 
to the future
to the latest trend
to the next cool thing
to the center of things
to where it was at,
without knowing 
that where it was at was empty.

My ancestors were calling me back then too but I didn’t recognise it,
I thought I just liked hiking. 

I kept getting pulled up short by history which was mostly tragic and backward and savage and not cool.
If my ancestors were calling I didn’t want to hear.

Then life got busy and their calls got lost in the noise. 

Now I am in a quieter place both outside and in.

My ancestors are still calling me and now I hear them strongly.
They call from the famine and the English oppression, the Celts and Pagans, the Vikings and the Druids,
I hear them all,
but the strongest call I hear is from my ancestors in Tír na nÓg, or the Land of the Young. 

I thought they were myths but their voices are as strong as any of my other ancestors. 
I hear them in the sky and mountains, the rocks and trees.  Through the curtain of time, I feel them close.

It is almost as if they didn’t die away but instead stepped into another dimension where they live and breathe as always. Laughing and calling out to any who can hear and remember that they too are Tuatha Dé Danann or The Children of the Great Mother.