Rose Mary Boehm- Three Poems

My Friend in Meth

Curious to know where everyone

flows to with such eager determination.

Sirens squealing.

Red and blue lights.

Without hurry I amble

to the front.

Something that used to be human

lies in the dirty slush

where a pristine white

sheet of snow fell only minutes ago.

The face black pulp. Fetal position.

Eating the earth.

I know that hat.

Always full of those fresh flowers

Beth never forgot to steal

when she needed an upper.

I’ve come a long way since analog

Digital is faster, immediate, easy and cheap.

Gave my old Nikon to a collector, needed

to know it’s cherished. Got too heavy anyway

for an old photographer with a dodgy heart

and doubtful knees, no longer trekking across

the Andes at 4000 meters.  They say the new way

lacks soul. You get what you put in.

Nothing is more reliable than change.

The album’s pages have yellowed some,

moisture made some photos stick. Here are my feet

kicking up a carpet woven by the fall guy, now covered

in liquid honey spreading towards the darker verges

of the evening road. Ireland in glorious

technicolor swashes, the wind seeming to whisk

the leaves up to a céilí played by unseen musicians

hidden in dark clouds of portent.  Before I turn

the page, I can’t help but remember the shadows

which ate our light. That’s the way it was.

Planctology

Plankter, a word with an obscene

feel. You’ll never find just one. Any organism

living in the water column, says Wikipedia,

and incapable of swimming

against a current, is a plankter.

Plankton.

Even sharks like them as appetizers.

From 30,000 meters and higher, humans

would appear rather small.

Can you see us swim against the currents?

Even jellyfish must stay put

but for the few capabable of independent

movement. Still, they can only do vertical.

Upwardly mobile.

The current trend

is all there is.

Even fashionable currents

in philosophy, economics, history,

religion, and other legends.

But the delusion of independent

movement remains complete.

My fellow plankton, I honor you.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, ‘TANGENTS’, her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She has been a finalist in several GR contests, and won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US).