“Unsolicited Advice”
Doug Van Gundy

“You have to find a place to light
before you set about raising up young
ones. Make them part of a place, bury
their afterbirth under an apple tree
in the yard, make their silent, half-
self a part of that dirt
so that they’ll always be able to find
their way home. If you move

that little girl or boy around, if you fail
to fill their pockets with a handful of family
ground, that child won’t ever rest, won’t ever
find a place to call home, won’t ever stop
thinking that they ought to be somewhere
else, someplace other, and Lord, you don’t ever
want to hang a thing like that
on an innocent child.”

From: Doug Van Gundy. “Unsolicited Advice.” A Life Above Water: Poems. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2007. page 33.

For a girl who has lived, in the last 4 years, in 4 states and two countries and who is about to move her life to a new place again (even if only for 6 weeks) this seemed like the right birthday poem. Look at me, almost 25… I can feel it just around the next corner.

My next update will be from the great plains…