Willmar, Minnesota.  Years have passed since visiting with relatives here.  Willmar, a great plains town is a center for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.  Driving into Willmar, you are unlikely to miss the switching yard for the  freight bearing trains bound for Chicago, or for the Pacific coast.  Willmar is home to the Jennie-O turkey processing plant, in operation since 1949.  I was born in 1949.  The town in all quadrants is surrounded by fields of corn and beans to the horizon.

I understand there is a breakfast joint with a reputation, Freida’s, located in Willmar.  My brother-in-law and I are to visit Freida’s tomorrow morning.  I am confident the breakfast will be exceptional as my sister-in-law designated Freida’s as a hole-in-the-wall.  I can hardly wait.  Sounds just like my kind of place.

Here is a poem entitled French Toast, that’s about breakfast, and about life.

French Toast

By Cammy Thomas

ah my mother used to make it
with eggs and milk
and stale white bread

slid onto a plate with
Log Cabin fake maple syrup
and I always wanted more

to disappear what troubled me
the man under the moon
the man in our living room

make enough spitting bacon
to forget the broken gameboards
splintered bat

missing family car
his vanishings and sudden returns
smelling of other rooms

my mother’s tears
over the stove
her catchy milky breath

“I was making French toast one day, when I started thinking about how my mother made it. And that got me thinking about how a mother will often try to make a happy and safe environment for her children, even when it is neither. The poem looks tidy on the page, but the three-line-stanzas, and absence of punctuation, are meant to give a slightly off- balance feeling.”
—Cammy Thomas

Cammy Thomas’ most recent book, Tremors, is forthcoming in the fall from Four Way Books. Her first book, Cathedral of Wish (Four Way Books, 2005), received the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

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Are we not “always wanting more?”  There are always thing’s to “want disappeared,” the things broken, splintered and the tears shed over a stove. Life, always off balance…

We need a tune to hold onto.  I liked this one before.  Once again it will serve as a compass to offer steady direction for today, in this life…

Here I Go Again

By Whitesnake

I don’t know where I’m going
But I sure know where I’ve been
Hanging on the promises
In songs of yesterday

And I’ve made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time

Here I go again
Here I go again

Though I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I’m looking for
Oh, Lord, I pray
You give me strength to carry on

‘Cause I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams

Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone

But I’ve made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time

Just another heart in need of rescue
Waiting on love’s sweet charity
I am gonna hold on
For the rest of my days

‘Cause I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams

Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
And I’ve made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time

But here I go again
Here I go again
Here I go again
Here I go

And I’ve made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time

Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
‘Cause I know what it means
To walk along the lonely street of dreams

Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
I have made up my mind
I ain’t wasting no more time

But here I go again
Here I go again
Here I go again
Here I go
Here I go again