Poetry Month 2023 Post #15: “Danville, KY”

April is #NationalPoetryMonth I am posting a Poem-A-Day.  Today’s post is about the deep visceral, cellular memory of growing up in a small town.

Danville, KY 

Centrifuge of my world,
my beginnings in this world.
A small town with big impact.
Viscera settle in like air,
a dermis,
an envelope of where I
came from.

Landscapes and sound maps
the feel of a bend in the road,
clouds speaking in hushed
voices of hidden things
shrouded moments
and mementos of everything
that life was.

Here now with more to me
than meets the eyes of
those who knew me when.
A stranger in these parts now.
One who got out and
who may or may not
have forgotten how it all was
back then.

Ghosts of those days meander
along the places I knew.
They appear and vanish
and I can only feel a
brush, a wisp of remembering.

Even now I can feel where
it stops and starts above my
gut, below my heart.
Held there for safe keeping,
averting snares,
from portals back in time
forgetting the things I
must remember.