Poem by Rose Mary Boehm

When We Didn’t Know We Needed More

Until ‘more’ is seen
Contentment flows in less.
Freshly baked bread

The few photos from that time show a lanky brother, too thin and tall by far, a pretty, but too slender mother, her hair strictly drawn off her face, wound into a bun, and this kid with a flower-pot cut in a white blouse, puff sleeves and checkered skirt, legs with knobby knees going on forever, up, up... but then, the photo was taken from below the little hill on which we posed.

We ate. Most of the time. Vegetarian by default, forays into meat making us sick, our
system wasn’t used to the heaviness of animal protein. I once got a rash all over my body because my mother, generously and happily, spread my bread with lard my father had sent in a battered old aluminum flask, leftover from someone’s trench warfare.

When our landlady planned a birthday party for her baby boy, we had no idea. She’d
obviously saved flower, butter, sugar from her ration card and probably bought some extra on the black market. Then she set to baking, glazing, creaming, sugaring. That day we sat at the birthday table she beamed across to us all: ‘Guten Appetit!’.

After a while most of us felt sick. One little boy began to cry. We all turned to him and asked with our eyes... He sobbed: “I wanted to try a bit of every cake. That one with the dollop of cream on top I haven’t touched, and I can’t. I can’t! I am too full.”

Until ‘more’ is seen
Contentment flows in less.
Freshly baked bread

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and eight poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals.
www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com

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