I’ve read, When Women Were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams, several times. In the book she tells how she inherited her mother’s journals and found every page in every journal blank. To me, that emptiness speaks volumes. One reading of the book, several years ago, compelled me to create the posted painting; but I found no words to go with the painting until now.

Where do they come from, the stories,
and before them the words,
that tell us how to live
in an uncertain world?

Do they lie fallow
in ancestral myths
rumbling in hearts
pulsing in minds
waiting for the quieted throat
to find voice?

Are they buried
in ancestral memories
darkened, silent,
waiting for light
to strengthen and grow,
to find life?

Where do they come from, the stories
and before them the words
that tell us how to live
in an uncertain world?

I say:
they come from us
blank pages are waiting