Compass_ & This land which built me_ / poems by Andy N
Compass
Years after I last visited in a compass of memory,
the meadows still call out to me,
My sister's children all know my stories,
Walk towards the same river,
Over the fence next to my Parent’s deserted farm
Crossed the bridge to Jackson's Boat.
feeling the same breeze, stood there, arms wide open.
I visit the cemetery,
Where my grandparents are buried,
facing the river heading towards what was once home,
and on the other side where my brother drown,
My childhood unfolds before me,
The heartbeats of my ancestry,
Where I grew up until I moved away.
The pulse of my life after school,
A patchwork of memories and love lost,
The farmhouse deserted for decades,
Stretched along the railway track,
The price we all paid.
The sunset over the hill,
holding the past on mute until we are gone.
This land which built me
This land remembers, a constant echo, wherever I wander,
whether between halfway places or brittle storms
over the fence at the edge of our woods near our home
a thread in the fabric of artist and model across time,
inherited memories fragmented over generations,
dragging sky hooks over the forests,
Woven together like somebody else's family tree,
still playing poker behind our teacher's back
A testament to choices made over lifetimes,
a past forever intertwined in a pause for thought
looking both backwards and forwards in seconds,
This land remembers, its stories waiting, forever to unfold.
