Do you remember breaking ice along the river bank?
And the sounds of migration
sweeping over the fields like swans,
white against the sky, and the sky–
bleeding?
All of winter was a scapegoat.
Clouds passed dark as the new moon.
Dark as fish scales in dark water.
Do you remember how the water moved?
Her hips the color of cattails,
and in her movement—a wet, secret thing—
sleeping,
the way lovers sleep?
Held,
the way mothers hold?
Do you remember
names,
given so easily?
And quiet words for heartbroken things?
Do you remember our grandmother’s hands,
how they could scoop twilight
from the rose gold and honeyed edges of evening shadow?
How they could bind July’s warmth in cotton
to leave draped over your winter shoulders?
And there are fish in the water that I cannot see.
And there are knives in my hands as they are growing old.
And you should know by now that all stories are
forgotten,
if they stop being told.
—
Michael Rainwater is a poet, carpenter and long distance backpacker. His work has appeared in: Common Threads and the anthology I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. He spends most of his time in the mountains of western North Carolina.
