You Can’t Go Back, one of the homes I lived in as a child, now abandoned, June 2007, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I spent two weeks on the road in June, researching my book. The second week was a road trip with my mother to Georgia, where I spent much of my childhood. Mom has been working on the family tree for at least five years. We printed out the whole tree (which ended up being about 4 feet wide and 5 feet long), taped it together, rolled it up, and carried it with us to the South.
To spur memories and aid my research, I asked her and my step-dad to drive me around to all the places we lived when I was growing up. I asked questions, took photographs, and taped their memories of love, land, and place. Not only was it a rich time with them, it was healing.
The demographics of the places we lived back then have changed. Many homes where I lived as a newborn, infant, or young girl, now reside in less desirable parts of town. The photograph is one of the homes where I lived with my mother. She said she used to rock me on the little side porch that is now overgrown with weeds.
I knew when I saw the Abandoned topic, I wanted to write about what it was like driving around, experiencing the past (some of which I was too young to consciously remember) through present eyes. I drummed up the memory of seeing this abandoned place, which was once our home, and wrote these haiku like a writing practice. They haven’t been edited.
I learned a lot on that trip. You can go back – but it’s not the same. And the death of one thing is the glorious birth of something else.
You Can’t Go Back – 15 haiku
rocking on the porch
imagining your soft lap
cradling my head
you can’t go back home
but you can peek through the past
as if it was yours
I raised the glass lens
sweat trickled down my armpit
let sleeping dogs lie
home was forsaken
covered with vines and green leaves
I opened the door
earth reclaims the past
memory doesn’t hold me
I am holding it
neighborhoods crumble
our memories are alive
long after we die
unraveling the past
identity cracks open
desolate and white
confederate flag
in the yard across the way
stops, pauses mid-air
the past is the past
never to be abandoned
as long as we live
grandmothers recite,
“go tell your stories, honey”
a dog barks nearby
running through puddles
along the wide Savannah
I dive but no splash
sultry and humid
I remember my last name
forgetting the first
time is elusive
batting flies against the rain
through leaky floor boards
pounding the pavement
emaciated memories
sparkling in the sun
the jewels of the past
backseat drivers one and all
remember, you are
-from Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – “ABANDONED”
-posted on red Ravine Friday, August 17th, 2007
-related to posts: Excavating Memories, Cassie’s Porch – Then & Now, (Geo) Labyrinth Finder, Duck & Cover
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