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...
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