I went to the Midwest to see my Mother for the last time. I have a friend who tells me that my Mother will be with me always. I know it’s true. She is in me and around me.
I spent my life growing up with her in the midwest before I married, moved to California, and raised my own family. Ironically she grew up in California and went to high school in Hayward, CA – near San Francisco.
I love the midwest and I love the flat, open spaces, the sky, wheat fields, combines, grain elevators that look like massive Kent cigarettes, oil rigs, hay bales resembling giant shredded wheat cereal, the peaceful song of the meadowlark. I love the click and buzz of cicadas at night, a giant, booming thunderstorm, the rain. I love having these childhood images along with the memory of my Mother.
Cowboy Road
Bison in the Field
Oil Rig
Road to Somewhere
Fence Post
Old Stone Barn
That part of the country is, within itself,
as unpoetical as any spot of the earth;
but seeing it . . . aroused feelings in me
which were certainly poetry.
–Abraham Lincoln
Donum of Visum 