Willis Powell and Hazel Gaddy were married on this day. This picture was taken in 1938. The child is my sister Patsy, their first born.The night my mother died, I sat up all night remembering and crying. Sometime along toward daylight I wrote this poem.
Home Again
They say you can’t go home again
And I guess ‘they’ should know,
But, Oh, my heart is weary
And I want to go there so.
To sit on Daddy’s lap again
And feel his love for me,
To hear trot a little horsey
As I sit upon his knee.
To see Mama in the kitchen
Doing what she loved to do,
To help her if she’d let me,
But she didn’t want me to.
I guess it’s not the home I miss
But the feeling that I had
That everything would be alright
When I saw Mom and Dad.
They say I can’t go home again,
But maybe ‘they’ don’t know.
I think I’ll close my eyes and drift
And just see where I can go.
I’ll taste the fresh milk again
Still warm from the cow
And feel the earth between my toes,
Soft and loose from Daddy’s plow.
Maybe I’ll hear Mama call again,
“Kids, supper’s ready.”
And we’ll all go rushing in. She’ll say,
“Wait for Daddy.”
Maybe me, Sis, and Brother will go
To the creek and spend a day
Chasing after crawdads, or on
The pond bank’s slippery clay.
They say I can’t go home again
But maybe ‘they’ don’t know
If I close my eyes and drift
Just where my memories let me go.
Fleta Aday September 1992
