NaPoWriMo: Broken Thread

Writing Prompt for day five of NaPoWriMo: “broken thread”. I carry a verse from William Blake in my “poems I collect” journal.
From “For the Christians”:

“I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s Gate
Built in Jerusalem’s Wall.”

William Stafford, one of my favorite poets, often referred to the above lines. One of my favorites of his from Writing the Australian Crawl:
“Only the golden string knows where it is going, the role for the writer of reader is one of following not imposing.”

I draw inspiration from these two men as well as the prompt today.

Broken threads, dried up little cloth worms
Discovered while cleaning the garage, looking at the
remains of your library. A broken thread
tucked in yellowed yearbook pages. A message
jumps out, describing a scene I did not know:
You roller skating on the third floor of the dorm
You, telling ghost stories until the wee morning hours.

Graduated, ready to serve your country, married
instead. Broken thread of the
dusky blue dress, remnant of your bridal gown
slipped in the pages of your Catholic Bible. Six months later,
you and dad climb aboard the Greyhound bus.
Heading west, your Bible packed next to his from the
Presbyterian church.

Settling into the warmer clime, place of sunshine,
Orange groves, opportunity. You and dad worked
out the ups and downs of married life sans
family opinion. You tucked a broken thread from my
baptismal dress into my first Bible
Easter Sunday, 1953, orange blossoms
perfumed the air.

These broken threads and others
tucked away like some gigantic puzzle of
your life. I sort them
wondering how to weave it altogether
now that
you no longer walk this earth
leaving broken threads behind.

Today is also Poetry Thursday, to see what others are writing and who is participating in NaPoWriMo, visit here.