To shelter the generations

There it sits, in the corner.

Assembled, half a century before,

For another man's child.

Purchased from a neighbor

To shelter a grandchild,

From the love of a woman,

For her son's wife and child.

Silently and lovingly, 

The daughter has preserved it, 

These many years.

Now offered as a gift,

To a descendant of the carpenter.

Once more to shelter a newborn,

As a gift from love, for a newborn,

To the carpenter's grandchild.

* This is James Broom McQueen (1885-1975)

My great-grandfather was the carpenter in the poem.

My mother had an identical cradle.