Three Poems by Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux: Remember with the Fingers in Case of Rain, Smoke,Cherry Jam (Measurable Wealth)

Three Poems
by Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux

Remember with the Fingers in Case of Rain
For Eric and Peter Middlecamp

Sheets of
Rain and
The sidewalks were
Slick
Oozing
Puddles and
Footprints in the snow
To guide me
Hobbling
Away from
The wake:
30 years and
Brain cancer,
“My beloved brother Eric”
The coffee shop busy with people
They said –
This is the storyteller
I told you about and
I thought of Duncan Williamson
Also lying in the ground
No paper to track his stories
Anymore
Just
As he would have wanted it.
He said
If I get caught out in the rain
And all I’ve got is
A piece of paper
In my pocket,
How will I keep my story?
Nothing but runny
Blue ink.
No —
Keep it in your head,
Your heart.
It is the same way
With people –
Wind and water
Have their way
In the end.

Smoke

Lights shine out
above the water.
High moon
   rises early, sets late.
Wood smoke
   lifts to meet it,
up into the cool,
    the cold
         the clear.
It drifts apart,
atom by atom, it
loses itself
but is not lost.

Up into the sky
dear sweetheart, up
into the soul world,
land of dreams.

You are there
you are there
without knowing it
without showing it.

Come,
Be close a moment
          — then —
       Dance
           Fly
     Release—
No skin to hold you, no
    bones to break, you
pass through the arms;
        bare winter branches
         of the rowan tree;
I
am caught.
Earth-bound.
    Alive.

Send me a post card
when you arrive.

Cherry Jam (Measurable Wealth)

All of history says
Give Life!
All of culture says
Have it all!

In my bones,
      in my belly
my recovering woman’s heart
I hold the dream of
a dozen boys
all freckled and fair-haired
running barefoot on the farm
doing chores
while four to six pinafored girls
help me can cherry jam
   in our big kitchen.
Fried chicken & potatoes
church on Sunday
     one good hat,
childbearing hips
     to make a mother proud, a
mother-in-law satisfied.

We have left our legacy in children
for a thousand thousand years. We
have had no other
measurable wealth.

And now
I say ‘no more—
I want no more.’
It goes against everything
but myself.

Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux is a storyteller, mime and stilt-walker. Her writing has appeared in Bumples Interactive Magazine for Children, Vox Poetica, and Storytelling Magazine. She has lived at the edge of the Boundary Waters, in the foothills of the Indian Himalaya, and off-grid in a yurt. She now resides with her family on the shore of Lake Superior, where they run Art House B+B. For more information, visit arrowsmithdecoux.blogspot.com

Copyright 2014, © Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux . This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.