Fear of Fire
Alone I am like a dry twig.
Good for lighting fires. Sparking
so easily, brighting so gloriously.
The man who passes by the brook
at the bottom of the large meadow
every afternoon. Will he search
for my crackling gift at sundown?
Will he hear me snapping under
his heavy boot, glad of the sound?
He finds me and sees how bright
I burn. I shall ignite and kindle, scorch
and incinerate. He’ll not contain me.
Alarmed, he throws me
into the stream,
from where I rise,
soft and fresh, filled
with vital juices.
I know the perfect place for kindling,
for consuming flames before the dowsing.
Fourth Thursday of November
‘Hello, Darling…’ Tux and slink. Come-fuck-me
shoes, heavy metal, precious heavy metal. Throaty laugh,
Hysterical giggle, Intense seduction scene.
Six-figure sums float on the beat, champagne is de rigeur,
white powder parted with platinum and black credit cards
in baroque bathrooms. We are in the Savoy celebrating
Thanksgiving with the UK branch of Glamour Inc in the most elegant
whorehouse in town. I step out into the light-polluted night, lift my face
to a fine spray, smell the Thames, where
loaded barges manoeuver upstream. A dog barks
down by the embankment, the street lamps spin haloes through
the drizzle. I shiver in this London night.
He’s losing words
They tumble from my keyboard.
Words, lines, paragraphs, pages.
Gifts for my friend’s father. She said,
He’s losing words.
He remembers the weather. He’ll have a weather
for you, for you, for her and for him.
You’re worried about your son’s drinking habit.
He says, There will be precipitations.
For or against euthanasia, the tempers run high. He says,
Easterly winds of up to 80 km per hour expected.
Then he looks up, frightened.
Bites his cheek, asks his hands,
Where are my words? Checks his synapses,
looks at Prussian-blue horizons, cloud formations
bunching up across the contrails, pixellated,
somewhere beyond Orion.
I never saw horizons until now
Between lightning and thunderclap
I counted time. You never know
how far away are the things
that burn, sudden flashes of insight,
blackened hopes for more.
While rain cleaned away the dusty
summer air, the mountains returned
to blue, the river swelled, I grew
ready for harvesting. And still
I hadn’t seen more than the valley.
Via circuitous routes I learned
to say no which was not accepted,
and yes which was treated lightly.
Between lightning and thunderclap
I stopped counting.
I left the storms behind. The weather
is gentle and without surprises.
I watch the Pacific rise and fall,
breathing slow and measured,
and the horizon holds no epiphany.
Immersion
So they’re going to baptize them. Greek
Orthodox. I never really believed. Figured
it was up to the adults to decide the name of their god,
the smell of their incense, which ring to kiss.
But there’s something to be said for ‘belonging’.
Congregation. Family. Group. Herd. Gaggle.
Religion. As long as the little ones don’t mind
being dunked. All that oil all over the place
and the priest murmuring and mumbling
benedictions (I hope), the icons scaring you
witless. Their eyes follow you everywhere.
When I consented to offer my daughter on the altar
of medieval ritual, she carried the mark of fear
for the rest of her life. She thought herself
caught in a macabre practice of Satanism.
Believe in one, believe in the other. The old
grandpa from a village in Cyprus was happy.
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) published in 2011 in the UK, well over 100 of her 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 won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.
