Lost in the Land of Iowa

My father and mother

how I like to remember them
young with hope and wonder

before I was anything

she barely fifteen
and he twenty one
marry 

and like their parents

start a family 

in Cairo, Iowa

sons to farm the land
daughters to gather the eggs

me, 

 

in my father’s arms
first born


My father and mother
farmers
digging and plowing and planting
seed in the dark earth

season after season

life filled with rotated
soybeans
corn
and wheat
and the occasional
field of potatoes
plowed up
and exposed

along with innocence


My father and mother

 

how I remember them
a trip to Lake Tahoe
our first and last

ten years of marriage

soon
to be dissolved
and turned over
for a new season

a new family
stronger and sturdier
than the last

but the hope and wonder
has abandoned them

left somewhere back
in that small farming community
of Cairo, Iowa
when a fire stole their home

left with only the
charred remains of a life
to be started over again
but never the same

hope and wonder
disappeared
like all the other traces of their marriage

except for me

Still filled with hope and wonder,
missing the mom gene