I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
         from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
         and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe Down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul
         with a cottonball lamb
         and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
         to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments --
snapped before I budded --
leaf-fall from the family tree.
 

© 1999 George Ella Lyon

Permission to post granted by Absey & Co and George Ella Lyon

In her book, Where I’m From (which included this poem by the same name), George Ella Lyon encourages her readers to look around them and see their world through different eyes, then challenges them to share what they see through poetry. Reading George Ella’s book prompted me to look at my own life to see what has made me who I am. And this piece is my poem, not in words, but in paper.

My roots are buried in a tomboy childhood of snips and snails and puppy dog tails, followed by twenty-five years of red dirt cattle farming. This paper piece came out of a lifetime that taught “waste not, want not” and “make do.” It is created from castoffs and tossed asides and found materials. Hickory scraps from Brian Bogg’s chairs form the handmade paper for the vessel, dirt and leaves. The moonseed roots, ripped from the ground last fall, destined for the compost heap except for their beauty, anchor the piece. Bits of a mother/son relationship appear in fossils and a hame ring picked up and pocketed while walking the fields together. A previous home is remembered in twisted wisteria pods.
 

Materials - handmade hickory bast paper (natural, bleached and watercolor tinted), moonseed vine roots, found objects (fossils, cow bone, hame ring, bits of wood, twisted wisteria pods)

Size - 14" H x 14" W x 12" D