Back to the Beginning

 Rose Mary Boehm 

 



From Bombs to Poetry

By Rose Mary Boehm

This photo was taken in 1982/83. I had just started to write my somewhat autobiographical novel. I felt still unsure of my English but couldn’t wait any longer. So, the first part slowly began to exist. The novel, COMING UP FOR AIR, (it became a novel (part I one of II) was finally finished and published by Blackleaf Publishing Group in January of 2010. It is now only available on Kindle.

My journey to becoming the poet I am today is a little complicated and I’ll make it as short as I possibly can: Born in Germany in 1938 (WWII began in 1939) I had a somewhat traumatic childhood, as you can imagine. But apart from doing her best to keeping us physically nourished, my mother nourished me in other ways: in the evenings, her work done (perhaps), but certainly before I had to slip under those enoooormous German feather beds and vanish for the night, she would read to me from the fairy tales collected all over central Europe by the Brothers Grimm, the fairy tales written by Hans Christian Andersen, and the Irish Book of Elves, filling me with shivers, wonder, and the conviction that good would always win. 

When I could read for myself, the only books we had (remember, there was a war on – as we were often reminded when we complained) were my brother’s adventure books, some classics, and German poetry collections (Heine, Möricke, Goethe, Schiller… that kind of stuff, leather-bound and in those difficult German letters). So, for now, I read my brother’s adventurer books and traveled with Marco Polo along the Silk Road, liberated Native Americans from the bad white man, rode a camel in the Arabian desert, learned about the Hajj to Mecca and so much more. Much later I dived into the classics and poetry.

When the War was over, it was still all a question of survival, but by the time I graduated I had to decide: continue my education and study at a university or cut myself loose. I chose the latter and began to follow in the footsteps of the heroes of my brother’s adventurer stories. Something I never regretted. While travelling I read, and read, and read, and wrote poetry (in German) of angst, melancholy, and longing. Some of them rhymed! By then I had bought and devoured Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, Eugen Roth, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Bertolt Brecht and others of that ilk. (I found some of my old poems recently and shuddered!)

When my first marriage (we lived in London for almost 25 years) went pear shaped, I left and lived in Madrid (it’s a loooong story  which I won’t tell here) and worked in a then start-up multinational (company language UK English) for eleven years, also writing copy. I finally retired at 66 and now had the time to think about writing full-time. That’s when my two novels happened and got published in the UK by Broadleaf Publishing Group (the publishers no longer exist in their original form), and when I realized that my strength lay in the short, to the point, sometimes lyrical, and compact, I remembered poetry. The same publisher who published my two novels took on my first poetry collection, TANGENTS. 

 

My eight poetry collections are available through Amazon, and my ninth, a chapbook, is ‘baking’ as I write this. Planned by Kelsay for publishing in June 2025. I am working on my 10th full-length collection.

Here follow five of my very first poems in English, from my collection TANGENTS.

Tangents

Reality is but an image in my mind
created by my inclinations.
Where your world ends, does mine begin?
What is the neutral ground on which we meet?
Can love make small of our visions or perhaps
it’s just a temporary truce of desperate need,
seeking respite from solitary walks,
lost in a space of our own perceptions
to which no other mortal has the key?

Where my world’s baleful grey and endless
dark melancholy fills cubic miles of empty heart, 
you dance in light-filled glorious joy,
your breath brings colours to a shadow world.
A lark in ecstasy, a bird of paradise,
a nightingale that sings of love and tenderness.

You paint my black a darker shade of bright.
My heart is in your hands – a fearful, breathless bird.
The song I never sang for fear of drowning
in tears I never shed no longer stays unsung:
It can’t resist your smiling eyes, your wonder
at my sadness and the hope you bring.
I always wanted wings.

Where my blue and your yellow meet
a bright green has emerged.
Stay for a while.
We may have birthed a magic space,
a summer field that draws its life
from winter’s death and spring’s exuberance.

As autumn’s gold seeps into the greens of summer,
its brilliant colours cheat the mind that knows, 
saddens the soul that can’t deny the signs.

Then winter touches gently but with urgency:
My friend, your summer days are done.
Remember what you’ve seen and don’t forget
that seasons come and go.

Goodbye my love. You taught me how to sing.
Although I cannot be a lark, a nightingale,
you gave me voice and words and light
and memory of more than I alone could ever know.
Miss Worthington

I saw her one last time.
Erect and hating her condition,
she rolled her chair a little more
towards the windows of her winter garden:
“The elms will have to go, you know.
The elms are sick...

“I climbed them as a child.”

There was that catch of hidden sadness.
Her voice had lost its edge.

Miss Worthington had stayed alone
from choice. She’d had her lovers.
The spinster word was not for her,
a vibrant beauty once and weathered now
to autumn’s gold and shorter days.

And in that instant, when I looked at her,
I knew that winter’s crystal hands
had reached for her and brittled her resolve.
“It’s time,” she said.
Perhaps she meant the elms.
Then she leaned back
and closed her eyes.

“It was just yesterday when I was young.
And suddenly
I’m being called to give account.

“Oh yes... I know.

 “One day, I thought, I will be wise.
We shall have time – tomorrow.
First let us conquer, change the world.
Let’s catch the firebird
and torch old customs, thoughts,
moralities from yesteryear.

“But what is wisdom... am I wise?
All that I’ve learned is: time cannot be saved.
The time you do not use is lost.
There is no piggy bank in which
you later find those days you wasted
saving time.
And while I lived my life in haste
it passed me by.

“The elms will die...” 
Her voice trailed off. 
She followed some internal discourse
from which I was excluded.

I waited quietly and was at peace.
Her triffid garden filtered light and sound,
some wild, exotic green caressed her lovingly.

My dear Miss Worthington,
you were my teacher and my friend.
Because of you my mind took wings,
and you it was who taught me courage.
You are the wisest of the wise
and your accounting will suffice.

Her voice came back,
her eyes stayed closed.
“They fuss so, don’t you know?”

A fly, emboldened,
settled on her cheek.
When no hand waved it off, I knew.

I did not move.
Her eyes stayed closed.
A smile had woven
sunlight in her face.
A sudden ray of brightness 
touched her silver hair.

Oh ...

‘Miss Worthington’ won third prize in the 
2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US)


Clarissa on the roof

Clarissa on the roof
holds on to the lightning rod.
People take her in their stride.
After all, the villagers have seen it coming.

“It started when her mum
locked herself in
and painted tsunamis.”
 
“Yeah, and then her dad
built a boat in the living room.”

“They had to take out the wall
to move it!”

Clarissa above the flood waters
waits to be picked up.


Wordwatchers (Inc)

Hello... I’m Emily and I have a problem
with words.

?

I can’t stop
hunting words
and
devouring all.

I have collected
so many 
that I am swollen
like a pregnant sea
ready to let go of my swell
until it sweeps over the world –
a tsunami of cosmic consequences.

?

tatterdemalion
lachrymose
schadenfreude
leitmotif
pusillanious
latitudinarian
parsimonious
glossolalia
moiety
confluence
inveigle
portent
salubrious
abulia
miasma
excrescence
woebegone

...and so forever!

Help. 
They’ll soon be feeding on me.

Per
fi
di
ous
mag
ni
lo
quence.


unlimited potential

choose, they said
and opened the door
to unlimited potential –
your thoughts create your quantum world.

blasphemy, she said
yet was tempted.
looked deep inside herself –
and thought of scones for tea.


Need

They bought her a puppy
when what she needed 
was her mum and a ride
across the far side
of the moon.