To An Unknown Roman Soldier

When you heard

the oars cutting

the choppy waters of the channel,

did you know it would be the last time?

You would never return to sea,

to family, to where?

Aleppo, Cappadocia?

Did you want to go back?

When you came with Claudius

to the shores of Britannia

did the sound of your sandals

on the peat mossed ground,

marching to Eboracum, seep into

your soul, or did you

long for the hardscrabble earth

of a Levantine landscape?

I see you there,

dimly as that might be,

through the strands

of my DNA that tell more

than my fair skin and blue eyes

alone can whisper.

A string of letters and numbers

stretched across time and space.

A sequence of alleles that look the same

in me as in you.

I see you standing in the ranks,

shadowlike, shield in hand.

Whether dream, or memory,

or something in between,

I see you there

every time I look in the mirror

and faintly I hear you calling

in the timbre of my own voice.