January 2023
Author's Note: Here, in Peru where I live, it's slowly becoming summer. Still not quite sure of itself. I hope that many readings and poetry events stay on ZOOM or I won't be able to partake. That is a gift covid has given me. I am physically sooo far away from English-language contacts/friends. Already there are signs that many groups are slipping back into their face-to-face worlds in that or that local library or café...
A No-Time
No crystals in this winter that falls upon us
with stealth. Music of the spider harps
rolling off softly rotting leaves. Sickness,
melancholy and anger fuse to build barriers
against a youth that lacks its usual bluster.
A fading day without the glow of heavenly furnaces,
the once rolling waves stilled, a tumultuous silence
submerging the shore inch by sodden inch.
Gaia is dimming. The wake-up calls
are more frequent now: Fire, water,
molten lava and a tiny killer.
A Summer's Day
The seagulls reclaim their rocks after we pick up kids, buckets, shovels, towels, and assorted wet bathing suits. The evening sun finds the sand still glued to salt-water sticky faces. Small diamonds on their noses. Hair wet and lank, their perfect little bodies tanned from the Cornish sun with a bite in high summer. The wind picks up.
Three kids in the tub
Exhausted mothers stretch out—
The perfect day
Gravity
I remember a time
when nothing could keep me from
floating, especially when I was in love. I’d rise
easily into the clouds and rest
in their fluffiness.
Since then earth gravity
has increased.
Or, while I wasn't watching
I may have changed planet.
I fight the pressure
every day.
Getting out of bed
I seem to turn
into a heavy sack
of flesh and bones. Every time
I get up from my chair I weigh more.
Climbing the steps
out of the pool
my specific weight
increases to that of iron.
Even my brain has shrunk
into itself, my will is defeated,
my powers of observation limp.
Spiders walk across my eyes,
bees buzz in my ear canal,
algae and dry moss fill
empty spaces
where only yesterday
my poems grew.
Mornings shiver me and
evenings leave me shriveled.
My steps are smaller now, hesitant,
and the heart is confused,
shaky and indecisive.
©2023 Rose Mary Boehm
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