We didn’t know we were poor
Sometimes we went hungry.
Mother made dandelion salad
and stingy-nettle soup. Potatoes
and carrots in water with salt.
Mother had been on the train again
to visit farmer Ruttenberger. Left our
last silver flatware with his wife.
Brought back a big sack of rye.
Can see her still, her too large dress,
her apron, the coffee machine
between her thighs, milling.
My scary aunt with the deep voice
and a wart on her chin would send us
into the woods: ‘Don’t you go eating
the blueberries now. Bring them home,
you hear? I need them for jam making.’
There was a place near the brook
where the world smelled of woodruff
and ceps, where bluebells announced
our indelicate approach.
Getting back empty-handed, round-eyed
and honest-to-god we hadn’t found even one,
my aunt wiped blue-purple stains
from our guilty faces.
Author of TANGENTS (published in the UK in 2011), Rose Mary Boehm’s work has been widely published in the US. Twice winner of the monthly Goodreads competition. A new poetry collection is earmarked for publication in the US in 2016. Twitter: @alia38