Full Circle

“You can never go home again,”

my sister, Linda, declared

after our folks died.

And a little voice in my head

retorted, “Oh yeah?”

So here I am in the house

where I grew up,

on the farm my parents owned.

Left behind:

a nine-to-five job,

employees and boss,

the corporate world,

rush hour and

two-income security.

I sit again amidst

the corn and soybeans,

dreaming in words

and images,

as if the stream

had never been broken.

Scraps

Squares of flannel,

felt and cotton,

printed and plain,

collected from a variety

of projects –

bookmaking to sewing.

Bags of floss,

rainbows captured

in plastic and

inherited from

dead grandmothers.

Likewise the embroidery

hoops, various sizes,

rescued belongings

of my forebearers.

I build small images

from these scraps,

stitching at day’s end

with the scraps

of my day.

Captured phrases

and repeated words

tumble through my head,

recreating images

that pass before my eyes;

or delineating memories,

replaying in my mind

like video outtakes.

I rewind them over

and over again –

I string together

these fragments

and cast-offs

to build poems.

Like a quilter,

I rebuild my life

from the scraps

of past, present

and future, 

piecing the materials

and stitching

against time.