Poetry Friday - Those Years Gone By

            It's Poetry Friday, and Janice is hosting HERE on her blog, Salt City Verse! Thanks for hosting this holiday season, Janice!

          I hope all is well with each of you, especially with the news that lately has not been good. I remember Margaret Mead's quote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  Keep going and doing!

My 'grown-up' tree!

        As we near Christmas, I turn to so many memories,  

 not especially about the holidays but about my family 

 and the stories from them. I am older now and try to  

 share some with my children and my grandchildren, 

 yet sometimes I feel those stories drifting away. If you 

 haven't lived them, it's more challenging to keep them. 

 Here's a piece I wrote with a haiku end; 

 perhaps it is a haibun?

Places of My Mind

 

           I hear the family’s tales and feel a pull to list them and write them down.  They are who I am, the child of my mother, my aunt, my uncle—stories, stories.  Down the streets we travel, relishing, embellishing.  Here is the old firehouse, where baby Linda, spoiled by the nanny, sounded the alarm, made firemen come—a story forever.

 

            Here is the corner, the Huff house.  I know it well yet have never entered.  It’s mother’s childhood story of loss in the Depression.  Two families split the house down the middle to save illusions, to eat more than potatoes, to avoid worse.

 

            Here is the grove on the farm—Pilot Grove—a guide to the place, announcing endings for some, beginnings for my family.  It became a town! My great, great grandfather moved here from Virginia, to prove the land, and perhaps himself.

 

            Over the hill is the farmyard, only known in spring because the daffodils still bloom.  It’s where Uncle Billy stepped on the nail.  Tetanus (lockjaw!) meant high fever, dark rooms, and children hidden away to mend or die.  He lived—lucky for me—to teach me how to fish.  There, the barn foundation.  Grandmother’s horse Lady took her oats there—Grandmother made the town talk, no sidesaddle for her! When Mother took her first ride, her only ride, the ‘falling’ ride, she rose with dangling arm. Parents were grim with worry over the pain and the expense.

 

            Now, back into town, see the front porch of the white house on Main Street.  At four: “Linda, Linda, don’t play with that jar.”  Broken, cut wrist, blood down the front of a newly ironed, starched, white pinafore.  But also see the maple tree in the back, now reaching old age—branches holding dreams of a young girl, wondering who she will become.

 

           It was a joyful ride to someone’s farm with my grandfather, year after year, driving his flatbed truck, others following, to find the town's perfect Christmas tree. One time it was my first time. I was finally old enough!

 

            I know many stories of this beginning place of my life, and I am the only one left to understand, to know which streets, and which houses hold them.  Who are-were-the Huff’s, the Brownfield’s, the Babbitt’s?  If I don’t list them, who?  If I don’t remember, where will the stories go?

 

remember

where daffodils grow –

there, stories stay

 

Linda Baie ©