Today's poem on Verse Daily by Mary Biddinger, took me back to the USA where I spent 13 years. I thought I didn't miss the USA, didn't miss Michigan, but I read this and then followed the links to some of her other poems and knew that I did, I do miss Michigan. I miss the life I had there, I resent the fact that no one in my family seems to acknowledge that I had an American life for 13 years. It is as if by moving back to the UK, my American life, my American self has been erased. I long for someone who knows, who understands, who connects with my inner American mom.
Something about these lines:
"....Your
mother held up the convenience store on my street.
She used you as the getaway driver. Nobody shoveled
that neighborhood out. Too bad you hadn’t been born.
Of course she really didn’t steal anything. There was
no section for sewing notions....."
takes me back to that time, reminds me my life then, when my children were young and I used phrases like "convenience store" and "sewing notions" and felt at home in a strange land.
Perhaps I will add Mary Beddinger to my list and W. H. Auden
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