Where I'm From

I'm posting this in response to Fragments From Floyd.

 

I am from safety pins, from Kleenex and peanut butter.

I am from the smell of fresh green beans cooking, plucked from their vines less than an hour before.

I am from the chestnut, the tulip poplar tree.

I am from singing gospel songs after meals together and closet alcoholics, from Vinie and Ellis and Clytie.

I am from the men who can fix unusual things and women who can hold their ground.

From you’ll pee in your bed if you play with fire and your face’ll turn green if you swaller that ‘bacca.

I am from Southern Baptists, and Old German Brethren. Women who played the piano every funeral, every revival, every Vacation Bible School and every Sunday and women who wore the prayer veil until the German Brethren church split.

I'm from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and we don’t remember when our ancestors arrived here, pinto beans and cornbread made with corn grown in the garden and ground at my great-grandfather’s mill.

From the firecracker that exploded in John’s mouth, the healer with herbs and turpentine, and the man who had to go to “public works” because his son, my father, married and left home.

I am from the drawer in my grandmother’s china closet holding the few photos of our families, the kitchen cabinet holding the few dishes or cups from way back when, holding them and using them holds the hands of my mother’s mother’s mother or my father’s grandmother.

Comments

[Carl V. Anderson]

This is neat. I saved the link as I may go ahead and do this myself.

[Lynda]

I thoroughly enjoyed your poem - it's really beautiful.

[Diane M. Schuller]

I loved this part:

" holding them and using them holds the hands of my mother’s mother’s mother or my father’s grandmother."

Lovely.

Diane