More lines from a thank you note... Thanks also for a Mississippi house, for each swing and slide and tree tied rope we raced to on arrival. Mostly thanks to her for each embrace, for teaching us to sing. For training us to become less afraid and how to make a karo pecan pie. Thanks for every story of cattle drives, of how daddy became the mule's master. Thanks for each cousin who came near to play. Thanks for a twisting road back to Memphis. Many thanks.

Thanks also for children sounds singing in laughter somewhere unseen. for an injured neighbor able to listen

More lines from a thank you note... Thanks also for buttermilk biscuits the kind now extinct since mother moved away for Fannie Emory who taught mom to cook thanks for granny Greer who helped me be less afraid and Betty Greer who taught me 'kick the can' thanks for every song in 'my fair lady' for leaving on a troop ship from Bremerhaven and for sailing past the statue of liberty thanks for the alley behind my childhood church for when i went to Illinois with Uncle Charlie Many thanks

Thanks again for breeze stirred ginkgo leaves adrift in silence to the sunlit sidewalk; and for a yellow lawn. for twin cousins

I walk the woods with daddy, holding baskets of fallen figs; gathered from the ground.