Where are YOU from?

When you read other people’s Where I’m From poems, you’ll see bits of common experience, but you will also see phrases for which you have not a clue as to their meaning or significance for the writer. This ambiguity gives their memories a certain mystery. We want to know more. Explain: there's got to be a story here.

If I were going further with this vehicle of self-exploration and writing, I'd suggest "choose one phrase or line from your completed poem and tell us what that is all about and why it is signifi-cant to you."

You know, you could tell quite a larger story about most every blank you filled in as part of this exercise. Oven-baked Saran Wrap? What's that all about? (See below.)

In fact, it might be an interesting project to see if you could weave all these related phrases of your history into a thousand-word memoir framed around these passages about yourself that have come together in the Where I'm From poem. Think about it. Write it. Post it.

My version of WIF (along with a short explanation about the Saran Wrap) follows.

Where I’m From / Fred First 2003

I am from the peaceful banks of a creek with no name; from JFG, toast and blackberry jam and home-made granola.

I am from "a house with double porches," a room filled with good ghosts and creek laughter in the mornings before first light.

I am from Liriodendron and Lindera, butterfly bush and mountain boomers

I am from Dillons and Harrisons, Betty Jean and Granny Bea-- frugal and long-lived, stubborn and tender, quick to laugh. Or cry.

I am from a world whose geography my children know better than I, from a quiet valley where I am the proprietor and world authority of its small wonders.

From barn loft secret passwords and children who can fly if they only try.

I am from oven-baked Saran Wrap and colds caught from jackets worn indoors.

I am from pire in the blood Baptists, from the cathedral made without hands, the church in the wildwoods, the covenant of grace.

I'm from the Heart of Dixie, son of Scarlett O'hara. From War Eagle, Wiffle, UAB and PT, from Walnut Knob's blue ridge and the soft shadows of Goose Creek.

From a "fast hideous" dresser and a home body from Woodlawn, from a grandfather I never knew that I can blame for my love of nature and my stubbornness, they tell me.

I am from fragments, the faint smell of wood smoke, and familiar walks among trees I know by name, from HeresHome and good stock. A man can hardly ask to be from more. --Fred First, November 2003

* I am from oven-baked Saran Wrap...

When Ann and I were twenty-two and newly married, my grandmother, Bea, often gave us left-overs from meals she had prepared. They would go home with us in a pyrex dish or Corning Wear bowl covered with plastic wrap.

Knowing how new-to-the-world we were (but never quite as naive as she must have thought), Bea would always remind Ann as we left to be sure and take the Saran Wrap off the dish before she put in the oven.

Two decades later when we had the last meal Bea prepared for us before rheumatoid arthritis robbed her of her independence, she gave us leftovers to take home. "And remember to take the Saran Wrap off before you cook it" she reminded us. Yes, Bea, we'll always remember.