Rose Mary Boehm- Three Poems

A Man of Iron

He's held together

by invisible wires of will,

tendons straining under the command

to hold at all cost,

not recognizing death

in which he won't believe.

Stretching out next to his pale love

in the bed made of white shrouds,

he gives her one last kiss,

his warm breath forcing

his conviction into her flat lungs.

Hunger

It’s always the one that got away, that sheep

lost in the sand storm, the man who couldn’t love you

and the child which didn’t want to be born. Then there

are the talents you wanted to develop but instead

you had to crunch numbers in Mr Henry’s lumber yard--

the songs you wanted to sing, the guitar strummed

by the boy across the road who never wrote you

a love song. Even your mum who made you who

you are today: practical and food on the table.

She never noticed your hunger.

In the Alpujarras – Andalucia, Spain

Dark earth, sharp stones, black asphalt,

we are moving through desert hills, spilling

dust from the tyres. Hot winds. First heavy drops

of water smudge the windshield, then the

downpour. We stop on the dirt shoulder.

Falling water drums on the car roof.

Eventually the racket stops. A few more

watery thwacks and the thing is done. From the earth

steams a cloud, the heat of the day lifting off

like the ghosts escaping Hades.

And the dark earth slowly transforms into yellow.

The tiniest flowers unfold on sand and stone,

stretching upward, offering their lives

to the pollinators.

The sun will set in an hour, the spectacle

will fold in upon itself. A question shimmers

over the yellow. Why? Life, of course, what else.