Poetry Blog Hop: Where I'm From

As I've not been doing a whole lot of creative writing in a long time, when @metta1313 suggested last week, an assignment fit for we English teachers, I jumped at the opportunity. I remember the 8th grade teachers using this same assignment as a "getting to know you" exercise with their students a few years ago and thinking how cool it was then. Now I'm trying my hand at the skeleton poem inspired by George Ella Lyon, "Where I'm From". 
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I  am from mountains of books

from cookies I bake and novels that consume me

I am from the silver-blue walls 

of my hideaway that hide me from the night

(calm, and at the same time 

mysterious, like a sky before the storm)
 

I am from the delicate, pink petunias spreading,

The errant sassafras against the fence 

whose long gone limbs I remember

as if they were my own.

 

I’m from big holiday dinners and perfectionism 

that makes them complete

from a neurotic, analytical, overly-talkative mother 

and a painfully distant father.
 

I’m from a nose stuck in a book 

and baking cookies at Christmas

and from sitting at a little table 

away from everyone else with my favorite Cousin at meals. 
 

I’m from "Hold your horses!" and "Stop picking your nose!"

and "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
 

I’m from big family holiday dinners 

with meticulously 

roasted meats and ever-present mashed potatoes

I’m from the suburban South and heaths and highlands,

sweet corn on the cob and whoopie pies.

From the time when my grandma brought home 

all the old books 

on record from her classroom 

when she retired,

my cousins and I hid in the back bedroom

red-striped record player on, Frog and Toad are Friends.

In a box in my closet
where it's not too far away,
are piles and piles of family photos
that I treasure,
but am too distracted to do anything with.
Someday, maybe, a scrapbook or
album, but for now
from piles of memories.
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