Poem: The Genetic and Synthetic

The below poem of mine was entered into the 2016 International Society of Family History Writers and Editors Excellence-in-Writing competition and was awarded second-place in its category.

I've added a few footnotes for the references.

The Genetic and Synthetic

I research my roots:
The nucleotides of life
and the synthesis
of ancestral experience
make me whole.

If she hadn’t left
her Texas home at age 20;¹
If he hadn’t fled
the Russian pogroms;²
These words wouldn’t be written.

Rural Transylvania, 1910.
A gun fired:
One child maimed;
One child entered
a depression-fueled starvation
he never exited;
One child, my maternal grandfather,
stood witness.³

Philippines, 1945.
A gun fired:
One soldier cleaning his rifle;
One soldier entered
a hospital he never exited;
His brother, my paternal grandfather,
stood Kaddish.⁴

Neither event changed my DNA,
but both influenced how I was raised,
who I became.

1. My maternal grandmother, Myrtle Vanevery Deutsch
2. My paternal 2nd great grandfathers, Moshe Leyb Cruvant, Morris Blatt, and Selig Dudelczak could all be referenced here, with a little flexibility on the term, Russian, to include Lithuania, Poland, and Volhynia, respectively.
3. More details can be read here.
4. More details can be read here.