West Virginia on My Mind
Possibly it's due to the recent death of my father. Or maybe it's just a matter of my own aging, but I've been finding West Virginia coming into my poems lately. It was the place my father was from, the place my paternal grandparents lived and where my family often visited when my brother, sister, and I were small. My paternal grandmother was Mary Elizabeth Gordon. I was named after her. The first time I ever found myself starstruck was seeing her in her Moose Lodge finery the year she was crowned queen.