Connie Soper

Where I’m From

I come from many places, and all of them
live in me still. Now I know that when you leave
a place, it doesn’t leave you.
California, Athens and Hamburg,
this shoreline I walk every day—

I am descended from a blue-eyed people—sturdy stock
who left their home so I could find mine.
Who sailed away willingly, without regret.
Their seascape belongs to me now—passed down
like a genetic geography, an ancestral visitation.

Here’s the family tree with names of those
I never knew—who died by suicide, alcohol;
or just wore out like unwound clocks.
Sometimes I shake the branches of that tree,
hoping to find a secret liaison, smoky love
in a Parisian cafe. But, I come from a country of women
who canned peaches and jam, pickled beets,
glued what was broken. Women who left
North Dakota, Idaho, and Saskatchewan
to follow their fathers, marry their husbands.
I carry the dust of those places, too.

I am the daughter, the granddaughter, the great-granddaughter
of women who never spoke of loss, who settled
into their lives wherever they were,
even if they wanted to leave.
Who moved on, even if they wanted to stay.

Connie Soper is a hiker, beach lover and poet who divides her time between Portland, and Manzanita, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, and elsewhere. Her first full length book of poetry, A Story Interrupted, was published by Airlie Press in 2022. She is currently at work on her second collection.