Rose Mary Boehm

Ode to Beer

Beer, a Sumerian poet sang your song
almost four thousand years ago
(that makes you a little arrogant).
During Europe’s Dark Ages
it was safer to drink beer than water.
You appeared in spas and shampoos
in the infamous 70s.

You are unrivalled in your versatility:
I have used you as bait for alcoholic snails
who were after my lettuces; they say
you’re a skin softener. You make gold shine,
you remove rust, you even polish furniture.
You are used in cooking and baking,
or tenderizing meat; you use your charms
in Belgian beef carbonnade and cheese soups.

You come in many forms, in many sizes and colours—
blonde and ice cold, or a delicious deep brown.
You are the answer to hot summer days
in pub gardens, under full-leafed chestnut trees,
where my friends and I have a couple of pints,
a stein at the Oktoberfest or a caña
in that old Madrid bar into whose cool darkness
we flee to hide from the brutal Castilian heat.

Beer, you have my heart. You brought me relief,
tipsy embarrassment, made me kiss that stranger,
you quench my thirst, you are my perfect partner
whether I decide on a medium-rare steak
or freshly caught fish in ceviche.
I don’t need an excuse to worship at your barrel.

The House Where Love Lived

I was small and it was large.
It was the house with a crumbling picket fence—
I remember each hole.
It was the house with gooseberry bushes
and potted azaleas, lovingly tended by my aunt for
my Oma. They put them out in the summer.
Oh, my Oma. It was the house in which my Oma
and Opa lived, my Tante and my Onkel,
and my cousin Karli. He could be mean.
It was the house where I heard a rabbit’s high-pitched
scream: it just sat there, all black, munching grass,
then sat up and let out the most piercing shriek.
It was the house were Opa cooked the wild mushrooms
we’d just collected in the woods by the little stream,
where Opa decorated the Christmas tree
we had chosen in the woods and cut,
where my Oma sat by the window in her wheelchair,
always wearing her black beret that had a little tail
on top, smiling with small eyes through
deep fleshy folds and wrinkles.
It was the house where we found a home
when we escaped the bombs
in the big city, until we could find our own place,
Mother explained.
It was the house where my auntie
smacked me hard when I wouldn’t calm down
on that first night I slept on the crack between her and Mum.
I was only three-and-a-half, but I never forgot. Still,
I think I finally slept. It was the house where Opa
came upstairs with heavy working man’s boots,
tired after a long day, and it was the house
where he lay, yellow, hollow, without his pipe
or his glasses, and looked up at the lamp that
was like an upturned bowl with orange decoration
and a dead fly. It was the house where he died.

 

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published (and rejected) widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was several times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and ‘Best of Net’. Her eighth book, Life Stuff, has been published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new chapbook, The Matter of Words, is now available on Amazon . https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/