Reflections on My Legacy after Visiting the Ramses Exhibit at the Natural Museum of the Arts in Houston, by Jo Taylor

Reflections on My Legacy after Visiting the Ramses Exhibit at the Natural Museum of the Arts
in Houston
 
to my husband, recently diagnosed with a rare and debilitating disease

Today I’m thinking about my legacy,
what I can hope for, what I might achieve.
I will never be a Beethoven, a Mozart, a Picasso
or a Keats, will never be crowned with an olive
wreath nor Tiktok my way to fame. I won’t be
in the annals of history, in the research journals
of science, in the exhibits of the great Pharoahs
whose cartouche carvings and jewelry collections
blazoned the family tombs of their mighty empires 
like a jillion coral polyps underneath the surface
of the sea. What I long for is a good name, one
chiseled in a single stone, a name suggesting
a rock or a gracious giver or one who has withstood
great heat. A name like Shadrack, a name like yours.

Jo Taylor

Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia.  Her favourite genre to teach high school students was poetry, and today she dedicates more time to writing it.  In 2021 she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire.  She enjoys morning walks, playing with her two grandsons, ages four and seven, and collecting and reading cookbooks.