Today's color was gray; I started off following the NaPoWriMo "anagram" prompt, but the poem took off on its own. The photo is of an old photograph of my great grandmother, Estella.
Where I’m From
There is not much nonsense.
The sun comes up, the gravel roads are graded smooth,
the crops are harvested.
Weeds grow
and are burnt from the ditches each April.
The smoke curls into the cold blue sky.
You don’t get away with much
when you’re sixteen, looping all nine streets
of town in your beat-up Chevy freedom machine,
smacking the dusty radio to make it keep playing,
waiting for the leaves to come out,
waiting for something to sprout. Where I’m from,
we drop R’s into “Warshington D.C.”
like dropping pebbles into the river.
Our garden trellises are strong, weathered gray
by five months of snow.
In summer,
the wisteria climbs frantically, squeezing the lathe
in its grip: its foothold to the
open air,
something to grasp onto as it clambers out.
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