By Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

In a small town in the back
country of Arkansas
On an even smaller country farm
a girl child was born

Third in the family
second girl child
With the eldest a sister
the next was a boy

Her parents were farmers
with chickens and pigs
Growing parcels of cotton
some corn and a horse

This horse was a mean one
biting human and fowl
His end came the day he bit
my grandpa as he plowed

Only one baby more
was born after the third
Another tiny girl child
making three girls and a boy

The second baby girl born
September 19, 1936
became this ladies mother
a mere twenty-one years after

It’s been twenty-five years
since that second girl child
departed this Earth to reside
with her family on a faraway farm

When it’s my turn to depart this Earth
leaving behind the living to continue
I hope to follow the path that they took and see them all on the farm again

____________________________

Post-Note – I post these pictures to show what a lifetime of cigarette addiction looks like. My mother died young, age 57. I’m 64, an age she never saw.