Learning to Draw a New Map

My writing has been stagnant for the last 2 years.  When I first moved here I was still trudging down the country road of Rise When the Rooster Crows, a collection of poems about love, hard work, disappointment, hope, resentment, and making new memories out of the tattered remains of the old ones.  There were gaps in the story to imagine and fill, so I had a map by which to continue walking as I write.  That lasted for a year until I felt the collection was complete, edited several times (read: many times).  I packed up my belongings and moved into the place I was currently living.
Now I look around and I see a big city pulsating with buildings, roads that need repair, music in living rooms, craft fairs in the streets, farmers' markets on nearly every day of the week, restaurants that beg for a lunch date, museum exhibitions whispering to visit before they travel onward, art receptions and wine tastings to meander, and coffee houses to hide in for a few moments to think, write, listen to music, and maybe chat with a new friend.  Oklahoma City is a good place no matter how much I miss what I remember about Berea, Kentucky, a place that is quickly changing and erasing any resemblance of concrete memories I revisit emotionally from time to time.
So for two years I have not felt drawn to a particular writing project or theme.  My hand is lonesome for writing words.  When I first moved to Kentucky I didn't write much either, until I read an obituary which struck me.  It was about the cholera epidemic of the early 1830s in the Eastern State Hospital, also referred to as an insane asylum to some. I researched other deaths in the area, and began writing poems in the voice of similar people experiencing similar fates, though some poems were historic persons such a Laura Clay.  Thirty poems later -- Lexington Lives -- and I was done; The collection was largely based on research but it provided a foundation which enabled me to explore a new map for the next collection, resulting in Rise When the Rooster Crows. I had made some friends in the English department at the local college and had a niche for feeling as though I was a writer, a poet, a person of words.  Since moving to Oklahoma I have very slowly found individuals who correspond to these seats in my circle, though I have yet to make it feel as though they are family.  That may take more time.
Over the course of the last six months I have begun paving a new map, also based on researched information for the basis of poetic imagery, themes, voices, and memories, but nonetheless, I may have finally opened the door to Oklahoma.  The new idea, which involves oral histories about centennial farms, may provide an aerial view of the place I am beginning to know and accept.  Through their stories, and through the people I am beginning to know and love, I may begin a new map to draw out by hand in poetic verse, lines that will weave across the printed page to tell stories I hope Oklahomans will recognize, verify, and accept.  I think I have a few friends here who will honestly tell me when I have strayed and when I have revealed a true-to-the-region voice sharing his or her story.