Love Story Series

 Rose Mary Boehm

 

 

 

The Happy Couple artwork by Rose Mary Boehm

The Loves of My Life

 by Rose Mary Boehm

The lover I almost married was Dutch, tall, lanky, loved jazz, and me. There was a time when I thought I couldn’t live without him. I could. And have done so for over 50 years since then. Being young again? No. Please. And with the experience I now have? Even less. You can’t be young with the experience of now—mistakes are mandatory!

Here is love poem #1, in memory of Willem. RIP.

 

 A night in Paris
for Vince Mendoza
 
Your chin on my
beehive.
Your hands like the
ends of snake
tails entwined
in the small of
my back.
No need
to pull. I leaned
easily into
your need.
 
The piano yielding
to the sax, which
carried our hunger.
Your legs knew
me when they
nestled against
mine pretending
to dance. 

 

 Artwork by Rose Mary Boehm and poem first published in the Ekphrastic Review    

I married, and tumultuous it was. There was love, and laughter (a lot of laughter), there were two children and a couple of young women who would (separately) ask, in a way, for his hand in marriage. When I first felt the emotional house I’d thought we’d built crumble, I crumbled a bit too. Poems # 2 and 3 are for my ex. The first one was an expression of the first pain, the second an expression of the mature woman looking back and knowing that there are always two sides to a coin. 

 

 

A marriage

The rain girl
lives in her dreams,
and in a house without a roof,
where mushrooms push
through the carpet,
and a beehive is forcing
its tumorous growth
through the piano strings.

As weightless as a new soul
she stares at him in distress.
And why would she remember
lightness now? 

 

 From my poetry collection THE RAIN GIRL, Chaffinch Press, Ireland, 2020 

 

 

September

Years wrapped into a handkerchief
of forgetting. Lover, husband, friend,
father of my children—an enigma forged
by your father and those who came before you.
I looked at you in the embers of our promises,
misread needs you didn’t understand,
mislabeled instances of extreme sadness.
How could I not recognize gentleness when
you reached out, time and again, shy as a mimosa.
“Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow”
They were singing your song, my tender friend,
and only now I realize that behind the wall
you built from cynicism and laughter,
were tears I failed to dry.

 

First published in ONE ART  

Then I fell in love (against all intentions) and married again (against all intentions). Over 30 years later, we are still married, living in Lima, Peru. Love poem # 4 was written in the first couple of years of ‘getting to know you’, love poem # 5 simply acknowledges our closeness, despite being separated by geographical distance.

 

 

Nightcall

when night presses down
and muffles all sound
when your wings are weary
and you would be chained
    call me

when the chirpy voices
of girls under streetlights
mute slowly in distended mist
eyes drowned by indifference
    I’ll be waiting

when the wavelets stop lapping
and the fish go deep
when you don’t ask
because you no longer want to know
    I’ll have the answers

when you drown in unmadeness
spooked by hyaline skin
lost in amorphous potential
greeting your everywhere anytime
    I’ll unfold with you

In my poetry collection LIFE STUFF, Kelsay, 2023   

 

Your toothbrush isn’t in its place

Almost 10,000 km from our home, you walk
the roads where we encrusted our lives.

Here, in the early morning hours, when first light
tries its power at the end of the sea,
when the streetlights still pretend their labour of night,
I turn and find the blanket flat,
the pillows full, the space transparent.

In over thirty years we have forgotten
what it’s like. Aloneness was our daily bread
and we were glad of it, filled our days—
and nights—with ourselves and our meditations.
We met when we were full and satisfied
with our worlds and all their riches.
Had no foreknowledge of the welding
that would make us into more than lovers.

First published in ‘The Magnolia Review’