William Ogden Haynes

Remnants William Ogden Haynes

The post card of a little girl on the cover of this book may be all that remains of a trip to France at the turn of the century, a remnant of someone's life and travels. The concept of "remnant" is an interesting one. We can think of remnants as what is left over from a larger entity, as in scraps of wood from building a dog house or pieces of cloth cut from around a sewing pattern. Thus, remnants are "parts" left from making a "whole." In many cases, remnants are discarded, but it is also true that parts can be assembled to make a whole once again as in scraps of cloth sewn together to construct a quilt. All our lives we deal with remnants in some form or another. For instance, memories are remnants of childhood, vacations and past relationships. Photographs are also reminiscent of many stages of our lives. Some consider objects such as toys, clothing, furniture and souvenirs as remnants of a time gone by. When you think about it, after an event occurs, all we have left are memories, feelings, objects and photographs. These are remnants of a larger whole that may no longer exist, but what remains helps us to at least partially reconstruct it. The poetry in this book represents slices of many lives that could be considered remnants, little snips that might fall to the floor unnoticed except for those of us who use them as the subjects of our narratives. The poems concern simple events such as going to the mailbox, walking through an empty home, examining items donated to a thrift store, winding a clock, finding a dead relative's watch or going to the grocery store. The characters range from a homeless man in a large city to a Native American woman in Colorado to a Saint who lived in the year 850 AD. There are college professors, crazy people and a woman who is dead, but still conscious. It is my hope that by examining these remnants the reader will be able to mentally reconstruct the more detailed and rich events that they represent.