Over and over
she tells the story about
leaving Oklahoma.
 
Newly married,
not yet adjusted to the ways
of being a wife,
he tells her they are
moving.
 
Wagon loaded,
summer winds stirring,
a final embrace
to a family she knows
she will never see again.
 
August it was.
Sun-scalded days drank
riverbeds dry.
Wind-swept prairies
blistered her skin from one
horizon to the next.
 
A piece of her youth
left behind
with each mile traveled.
 
On the flatlands
they settled.
Planted life full.
Plowed deep fields
of homesickness
beneath
the winter wheat of promise.
 
I was born in Kansas,
not far from where my grandmother
settled.
It was to here that her travels
ended.
It is from here that my journey
begins.