The Fifth Day of Christmas: nAncY Rosback

A short conversation on Twitter started with wishing a happy birthday to a son, when it was actually a daughter. And then this:

@poemsandprayers: thanks glynn...cj ....um...is a girl :-) jane is her middle name...on my grandmothers' side was a baby taken in that was left…on church doorstep in kentucky, they named her america jane, so we used jane as a middle name for her. america jane was one of my ancestors that was from ky. and ended up in so. illinois.

So meet nAncY Rosback.

Descended from America Jane

a baby, a foundling
left in the hands of God on
the doorstep of a church.
they named her not Jane but
America Jane, because this was
frontier-like and that’s what you did
frontier-like and everyone understood.
and she grew, and grew up, and had
babies of her own whom she loved and
treasured and didn’t leave on a doorstep of
a church because she knew God had left them
in her arms instead.

And a baby had a baby had a baby,
and a baby found herself growing up in the
prairies not too far from where Lincoln lived.
and she grew up playing in corn field and a ditch
and she learned to ride a bike that moved her all over
town, because it was okay to do that unafraid in the 1960s.
she grew up and got married and lived in Oregon where
she grew a family and some grapes for wine named Sineann.
now she takes these beautiful photos and she writes poems,
about a voyage, and youth, and relationships, and community
and all the other things in life that matter, like God. to find her
you have to just say the word, or tweet.


(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)