Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux’s most recent poem to appear here was Let Grief Pour Out of You as if You Are Watering a Garden (March 2014).
Myth of Mother
By Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux
My mother:
..Grandpa’s favorite, they
both bit their tongues
when laughing as if
..trying to hold a sneeze, slapped
..their legs
..rocking back and forth
in the wake of joke or wit.
She poses
..forty years ago
in collegiate maroon
………………& gold
..saddle shoes unscuffed
..stockings
..to her youthful knees.
Her hair is long & blonde,
..bleached by summers
..as a lifeguard.
A girl, she wanted to play the drums.
“That’s not God’s music,”
..they told her–
..only Grandpa & the cows
..played the radio in the barn, so
she played trombone
..in school & church.
A girl,
there were no other sports
but one with pompoms–
Back then
they thought it hurt a woman
to bounce a ball herself
& so
I have a photograph
of my beautiful
..doe-eyed mother
graceful & poised
so pretty I can’t imagine
she would leap to her feet,
wave her arms in the air, yell
“Go, boys, go!”
Now she channels Freya
..a goddess as blonde
..as she once was but
one with her own legends,
..own adventures.
..My mother does the same,
she makes her myth
……herself.
An interesting poem about a mother’s “status” back in the days a daughter remembers. Times were when young women were stuck in lives that the powers that be had rigid rules and the women dare not break those rules. I love it that her mother became who she wished to be by making her own myth! Now times have changed but only for the few who become the person they were meant to be.
Great poem!