Great Grandma Connolly's Hand in 1936
Print by Great Aunt Edythe Toebe
This is poem #10 in my series about books and reading and words.
Students - yesterday our family went to the library. It had been too long since we had been there, our evenings poorly prioritized, our fines too great to imagine. But today we were back, and what a treat it was. Now there's a full striped bag of books calling out to us from the corner of our own little home library. And once again, I find myself wondering about all of the other hands, other lives, other unknown book relatives who checked these books out before we did.
Do you ever write about your own mysteries and feelings? Today's poem comes from that place in me, from a place of feeling that I know people from the past. Such feelings may be quiet, and to hear them we must first quiet ourselves.
The picture above is of my mother's mother's mother's hand. It is an ink print, made by my Great Aunt Tom (Edythe.) In the 1930s, Aunt Tom would print the palms of friends and family and then write notes about the different hand lines, predicting the future. Once Aunt Tom told me that she stopped doing this because "so many things kept coming true."
If you live in the WNY area, there are two great events this weekend to know about. One is the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair (free) which we plan to attend. The other is a Roycroft class titled Integrating Book Arts in the Classroom, all about making books.
National Poetry Month is only two weeks away, and this means that there are only 13 days left of My Poem Writing Year. With no plan for the next chapter, I am open to suggestions!
Andromeda has today's Poetry Friday roundup over at a wrung sponge. Enjoy wandering through poems and thoughts and book reviews and celebrations as you visit this week's poetry neighborhood.
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