A Muster of Pride / Julie Martin

A MUSTER OF PRIDE / JULIE MARTIN

Poetry

My grandmother made scrapbooks

from brown paper bags.

We call this ‘upcycling’ today.

Treasure conjured from colorful scraps,

odds and ends,images collated.

Repurposed.

Eye candy.

Her chosen images

imprinted on my imagination.

Swirling in an array of memory:

colors, empty spaces,

bond of glue on paper,

the pages fan open in a dazzling display.

Omnivorous, her fingers would strut, foraging through piles

of ephemera: greeting cards, magazines, calendars,

seeking to satisfy requirements

for whimsy, novelty and color.

Keen eyes focused, predatory scissors poised,

she quickly gleaned prints of domestic bliss,

clipping pictures of rosy cheeked children nourishe

d on soup and glistening towers of jewel toned jello.

I grew up between the pages

of her scrapbook, my first book.

A thousand eyes stared back at me

as I learned by heart

the incantation for ingenuity -

how to make something from nothing.

The background image for this page: a texture of brown wood, like tree bark.

@easy_emu on Unsplash