TL Boehm - Writer

poetry and thoughts for furry, feathered and sometimes scaly friends who have touched my life...I miss you Ember...Picture below is Tammy, Ember at my side and Tempest in my lap circa 86

Ember’s Gone

The fire is cold
Ember’s gone
Faithful friend
Final note of a favorite song

Golden girl
Can’t count the times
Saw my lonely face
Reflected in your amber eyes
You gave me shelter from myself
Little sunbeam in my cloudy skies

Friendship doesn’t end
You are here so alive in my broken heart
And I wait for the tears to dry
Precious dreaming of you to start

I’m left to my life without you
Like I left you alone to drift away
Did I abandon you like a careless child
Did I think you would shine forever
Like the sunlight on a sweet summer day

Just wanted one more look
Amber eyes calm and warm
But you couldn’t wait, Faithful Friend
The fire is cold, my Ember’s gone

TL Boehm
6/23/99  For Ember Coal - 1985-1999

Parrot Parrot

Tis my firm belief
That despite their ugliness
Humans are suitable pets
In times of loneliness

Parrot parrot on your perch
Am I the thing for which you search
Parrot behind your bars of steel
What secrets will you reveal

Well its too wild
And its too weird
Its everything
That you feared

Tis my firm belief
About all mankind
That they manage well
For such a tiny mind

Parrot parrot in your cage
What would you write on the page
You watch me with one beady eye
And squawk and avian battle cry

I’ll bide my time
You’ll cause disaster
Then I’ll be
Your parrot master

You will run
But I’ll fly faster
You’ll be the pet
Of the parrot master

TL Boehm
C 84  85   90  6/94

For Bernadette Peepers-Hughes (Boehm) - Bernadette is alive, squawking and in love with my husband Dave...(adulterous wench) I've had her since 1984 when she was about a year and a half old.

Greener Pasture

Have you found a greener pasture
Are you running free my friend
So fast you cast no shadow
Through summer days with no end

Will I miss your velvet muzzle
Nuzzling in my palms
Your whinnied equine calls to me
Like the notes of a favorite song

Does the breeze blow gentle on you
Ruffling through your mane
Does it remind you of my hands
That cannot touch you again

Keep galloping through my soul friend
Though pastures green and high
Take this wild part of my heart with you
To that place where dreams never die

TL Boehm
7/1/92
For Tammy Jo Wilson
And her colt, Chance’N’a Billion
(89-92)

Ember
My golden girl
Be careful with those two chocolate lumps of fuzz
At your feet
They won’t melt sweet in your mouth
Like little Hershey’s kisses
You pick them up by their heads like plastic chew toys
Dropping them when they squeak
But they aren’t your rag mouse Ember
You can’t pull the stuffing out of them and scatter it
For me to sweep up later

Does a puppy run through your bones
When you see them play
I see two echoes of you in their golden eyes

Ember
Teach them all you know
Help them shred my last roll of paper towels
Show them the way to steal cheese from mouse traps
Without getting a snapped nose
Let them shred bamboo and slide under the fence
When I’m not looking
And you must teach them to protect me from my demons
As you do every night
When I’m alone in my darkened house
Like Diana in her woods
Out of arrows
And the moonlight is swallowed
By trees that scratch my window
I feel your weight
On the covers
On my feet
I see the tips of your ears
Gilt edges swiveling
As you sift through sounds
I hear your tail thump against the footboard
I know
The sirens outside
And the mice scrabbling under my bed
Can’t harm me

Ember
My golden girl
I know you will teach them well

TL Hughes
11/20/86