Category: Memory & Roots

The shelves were heavy with the books she left behind,

An endless archive gathered by a curious mind.

Cookbooks by the hundreds, tastes of every land,

Yet the truest treasure came directly from her hand.

For tucked between the recipes of butter, spice, and yeast,

Lay handwritten edits for a family’s quiet feast.

A penciled alteration, a measure to correct,

A gentle score of dishes that had earned her deep respect.

To trace her cursive letters brings a warmth of yesterday,

Yet stirs a quiet ache for all that slipped away.

She collected every volume, every title that she could—

Leaving notes along the margins to remind us of the good.

I am the quiet geography of eleven distinct terrains,

A tapestry woven from centuries of winter storms and rains.

I do not begin with my own first breath or the modern streets I see;

I am an ancient map redrawn, a living, breathing history.

Nearly a quarter of my heart beats in the English breeze,

Where Southeastern hills slope gently down to northwestern seas.

The East Midlands rise within my blood, a steady, grounding clay,

While the rugged cliffs of Devon and Somerset watch the fading day.

And from the West Midlands, a smoky, industrious thread is spun—

Four distinct English corners, resting quietly under a single sun.

The map shifts wide, across the rolling water’s foam,

To the Southern Germanic valleys that another part of me called home.

Through Northwestern Germany, the ancient forests softly speak,

Leaving a legacy of quiet strength, enduring and unique.

Turn north toward the horizon, where the colder currents blow—

I carry the silver light of Denmark, dancing on the snow.

And the deep, majestic pines of Sweden leave their enduring trace,

A Nordic resilience carved into the contours of my face.

Listen closely, and you’ll hear a wilder music start to rise,

From Central Scotland down to Northern Ireland’s stormy skies.

A Celtic, Gaelic stubbornness, a love for song and open space,

A fierce and beautiful longing that time can never quite erase.

Finally, the borders soften into the vast and open east,

Where the rhythm of the old world has never fully ceased.

In Northeastern Poland, where the amber rivers wind,

and across the broad North Central plains, the remnants that they left behind.

I am a map of the old brought into the new, a tapestry of ancestors I never knew.

Summer has faded, the green fields are gone,

The leaves turn to embers as autumn moves on.

The air has grown crisp with the stealing of light,

As cool autumn afternoons yield to the night.

A collective excitement begins to awake

For the phantoms and witches the darkness will make.

Soon goblins and monsters will step from the shade,

To walk the wide earth where the memories fade.

The tables are turned and the season has woken,

In the Ides of the Fall when the silence is broken.

Though shadows may crowd and the twilight grows chill,

We huddle together, expectant and still.

The old warmth is put down as the wild things awaken—

For daylight has vanished; ’tis Halloween season.

The glass jars were scattered all over the house,

Stuffed full of sweetness and waiting for a mouth—

Not sugary confections, but cocoa and dark,

A chocolate sanctuary mother kept stocked.

The children would sweep through the rooms in a blur,

Emptying vessels without saying a word.

The chocolate would vanish, the glass would run bare,

And no guilty child would confess to be there.

But mother just smiled at the mystery case;

She expected the raid and accommodated the chase.

For high in the cabinet, tucked far out of sight,

Lay her private reserve for the quiet of night.

And if ever the kids breached that high, hidden shelf,

Mother still held a last hope for herself—

Safe in the pantry, bitter, unbothered, and raw, Lay the baker’s square chocolate no child ever saw.

They begin as all green living things do,

Sprouting from the earth in soft shoots of green.

Powered by the light, they reach for the sky,

Stretching tall toward the passing clouds.

Their buds widen and bloom into golden crowns,

Yellow petals encircling the heavy head of seed—

Just as a mother cradles her children in need.

The sunflower reigns as the royalty of the garden,

Rising up to match the height of a human frame.

One can only marvel at its glorious, golden power—

The flower of the Kansas soil,

The one my mother loved so.