Roots

She enters carefully A journey that began so long ago Culminating on this threshold of discovery With the turning of the knob, an old door, of peeling paint and squeaking hinge The house, a derelict with broken shutters Darkness, mold and gloom,...yet a pleasantness...a sense of familiarity Floors that creak and groan Surveying each room...gathering thoughts, sensations, emotions Digesting the essence of stories told Of sitting on a grandfather's knee, and hearing of this legacy So long harbored, like faded photographs, in her heart A glance outside the bay window Pushing aside the cobweb laced shade Rubbing dirt and grime from the glass, and viewing a river in the distance A pasture overgrown with weeds Gopher hills the only things sprouting in the yard Flower beds empty, except for tendrils of devil grass.. Forsaken, abandoned it is today,...but she can picture it then... She can see the geraniums in bloom as if it were yesterday She walks the hallowed rooms imagining the family The father coming in from the fields Covered with the red soil that he cherished The mother, apron clad, gathering her children Yes....it is over there where they would sit... Around the table, the Bible resting on the shelf Waiting to be read by evening light Just as the giant oak in the yard That shouts and tussels with the wind With deep roots which cling so intimate with the rock below In this journey, she clings... To things that are deeply rooted Family, love, life, death, that which is...that which has been.. No longer are there only sepia colored stories Stored in a shoe box on a closet shelf... This is a journey that continues on and on... And like the oak...it reaches deeply...searching for constancy These are her roots... ___________________________________________________________________