Lights on a Ground of Darkness

I recently discovered Ted Kooser, former  US Poet Laureate, Iowa native, Presidential Professor of U of Nebraska - whatever honor that may be.  He wrote a lovely little book on his family in Iowa, sixty pages of nostalgia, reminiscing and the lingering presence of the irises that followed his family from home to home, a Midwestern and Southern tradition, sharing flowers from the home place.

In the preface, a quote from Edwin Muir:

  'Time wakens a longing more poignant than all of the longings caused by the division of lovers in space, for there is no road back into its country.  Our bodies were not made for that journey; only the imagination can venture upon it; and the setting out, the road, and the arrival:  all is imagination.
  Our memories of a place, no matter how fond we were of it, are little more than a confusion of lights on a ground of darkness.'