Introducing...

I almost fall off my office chair with rhapsody when I discover another friend has started a blog.

Layla just did. You should read it! She has vibrant humor and personality in real life, and now it's in print.

I met her back when you could spend as much time reading her jacket as you'd now spend reading a blog post. Later, we spent a night on a dirt floor in a hut with chickens an arm reach away. She's a true friend after all these years - willing even to buy curtains for me while out of state on sabbatical.

On her blog, I enjoyed a poem she wrote from a template. Decided to try it out myself and this is the result: (Here's to you, Ms. Hanash.)


I am from a box of sugar, Kirby vacuum, and white carpet.

I am from a pink house on a busy street…simple, small, sterile.

I am from the lilac bush, oleander, cactus-in-a-pot. The philodendron, morning glory, sun-bleached livestock skulls adorning the back fence.

I am from Grandpa’s corsages and stubbornness, from Noela Beth and James Erwin and the unknown biologicals.

I am from the quiet and the rage.

From wash your hands and bring your sweater to the theater.

I am from Methodism and Evangelicalism. Christmas and Easter and nothing else.

I'm from Mojave Desert and gold mines and boom towns. Dr. Pepper Jello salad and Pennsylvania Dutch.

From the two who met on Fremont Street, the Thunderbird convertible, and the loooong wait for a baby.

I am from precisely half a dozen multi-colored rectangle photo albums, then piles of Polaroids, sloppy file boxes and stacks of memories too complex to arrange with well-thought-out captions.

And too colorful to arrange in poetry.