Poems by Rose Mary Boehm

The Beggar

A sharp wind
makes me pull down my hat,
tighten my coat.
"Bloody freezing, innit."
He has no gloves.
His blue swollen fingers
barely close around the cup
which rattles in response
to the few coins I let drop.
"Thanks, mate."
He huddles a little deeper
into the recess by the bank’s
cash machine.

​"They should move them on.
Bring the neighbourhood down."
I turn. The owner of the complaint
is tall, blonde, sheep-skinned,
with tell-tale signs
of trying to stem the tide of aging.

I suddenly feel guilty by association.
Because I gave him so little?
Because I gave at all?
Because I smiled at her?

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We Didn’t Know We Were Poor
​
Sometimes we went hungry, but not much. 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. Everyone was the same. You don’t notice if you have nothing to compare yourself to. 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 while winking at my mother. My uncle is looking for his cat with a darkening face. ‘I’ll find out who ate her!’

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When I was Six

I remember the smell of
earth after summer rain,
the high grass hiding
me. It tickled, pinched
and stung. I followed
the activities of beetles,
caterpillars and assorted
small life.

Rolled myself packages of sorrel;
chewing them despite the acid
was the challenge.
Being hungry helped.

The lark slowly climbed
into blue. Became a small
black dot, trilling ecstatically.
My summer vision was framed
by green stalks of long grasses
and their seeds.

Standing on a milestone
I saw the fields covered
in shimmering heat, warping
invisible air. Cornflowers and
poppies between sandy-yellow
wheat. There would be a good

harvest. Yes, even then I knew
about harvests, watched the
sweating man and their flails.
Sometimes I’d take home
a pocket-full of grains.

Mother wiped my face,
hands, knees. My feet
permanently calloused.

The grains ground in the coffee mill
held firm between mother’s legs.
That last summer before
next May when strange men

​came in planes, tanks, and jeeps,
I watched André riding the brown back,
his face lit by the evening sun,
watched the oxen pulling carts,
watched the plow grooving
black furrows for the autumn
field, watched the swarms
of mosquitoes dance over the
stagnant pond and fell in love.

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a ‘Pushcart’, once for ‘Best of Net’.
www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com

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