White Frames

The big boys picked up long sticks and whittled them
to a fine point with sharp pocket knives. We pierced the points
through the hot dogs and held them over hot coals
until they blistered, then slid them into soft white buns.
The milk cans from Uncle Ray’s barn, full of ice and lemonade,
are sitting on the picnic table, beads of cold water running down the outside
like sweat on the boys’ faces when they played baseball.

Janet Umble Reedy details with sensual simplicity the stages of her life and heritage in White Frames. Like the crops that they sow, the generations of the poet’s relations and subjects come and go in their season. Written and accumulated over a life lived on three continents, Janet Umble Reedy’s poems move through a landscape of changing seasons, life and death, birth and blossoming, amongst the thousand daily details which make up a life well lived.