Vox Populi
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Rose Mary Boehm: The Matthew Passion
How I once cried with the crucified Christ,
how I suffered the agonized night of Gethsemane,
how I waved that palm leaf,
how I felt the betrayal of Judas
and the foreboding of the last supper.
I was 12 and I believed.
Then the ‘whys’ came in rapid succession.
If there was a plan, why was Judas cast out
for helping to fulfill it? Why would Jesus
tell the unbelieving Thomas to touch him,
trying to tell him that he was flesh and not a ghost?
Could the stories be true that this unruly teacher
and anti-Roman firebrand called Jesus
did not die on the cross,
but that the stone covering his grave
was removed by friends of Joseph of Arimathea?
That the resurrection story was a sham decided upon
during the famous Catholic Marketing Conference
at Nicaea? I was 21 and left the church officially.
Was I not an adult and sophisticated?
And yet, how my heart broke when I listened
to the soprano giving herself to the most profound sorrow
in Bach’s ‘O Golgatha’, when the choir filled the Gothic
cathedral’s acoustics with ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’
entering me as sharp and deep as a hara-kiri blade.
And now I thanked God for those who believed
so passionately that they transfigured heavy stone
into the beauty and elegance of Gothic arches—trying
to reach their saviour—
and then a rotund organist called Johann Sebastian
created soaring music that will forever touch the spirit
that needs no church but lives in us all.
~~~~~
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, short stories, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her poetry has been published widely. Her new chapbook, ‘The Matter of Words’, was published in June 2025, and a new full-length collection has been slated for publishing in 2027.
Poem copyright 2026 Rose Mary Boehm
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Sorry, meant to write “This led to a lot of searching but did not interfere with, and probably intensified, my enjoyment of sacred music.”
Your poem has struck chords in a lot of readers.
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What a beautifully wrought poem, Rose Mary. As a child, I lost faith in Jesus as divine when I reasoned, right before First Communion as a Catholic, that since Jesus was a Jew, like my father, he couldn’t also be God. This led to a lot of searching but did not interfere with but intensified my enjoyment of sacred music. Last Friday, I and my Jewish, trumpet-playing husband attended a peace-bringing performance of the Rutter Requiem at a local church. Balm. My father would have been transported and I am forever grateful to him for having me study piano and play Beethoven and Bach with him on violin.
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Lovely! Thank you. Michael Simms
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How beautiful & poignant your poem, Rose Mary — how I felt and remembered so chillingly my own questioning through your lines. And, ohh the music, right? And it is music indeed that saved me so, so many times when doubt and the feeling of abandonment choked me. Mahler, Verdi, Beethoven, Dvorak. But the music of the wind, the soaring song of a wren, or warbler, the music of a child’s laughter, too. What a poem, and I’m grateful and join the “chorus” of all the praise today — bravo Rose Mary!
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Laure-Anne, your comments here are prose poems in praise of beauty. thank you!
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I absolutely love this poem. Thank you Rose Mary and Michael for the Easter gift.
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Great poem, Rose Mary. I read it twice, then read through the comments while listening to the wonderful “soundtrack” provided, courtesy of Vox Populi. I had a childhood similar to many of those who commented. Raised in the Presbyterian church, I believed and never questioned until my late teen years, when I abruptly lost my faith in early college due to exposure to new ideas (it’s true what they say! college corrupts!). Last Easter I tried going to an Easter morning service at a Lutheran church where many evening classical concerts are held, inspired by a Jewish friend who didn’t become observant until middle age. But the Easter service last year didn’t “take.” However, I ended up writing a poem about the experience which I think I’m going to send somewhere tomorrow. Thanks for awakening those memories.
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Thanks, Penelope. You take us for quite a journey in one paragraph! Michael Simms
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The questioning, so true for many of us. And I agree that great music/art can indeed feel holy. I majored in music in university, and I believe some composers — for me Mahler and Beethoven — were able to write music that transcended their human experience and takes the listener there with them. Thank you for this poem.
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Beethoven is my number one. Because my beloved is a Mahler fanatic I have come to know and love Mahler too. I went through a phase when I started every morning with Bach.
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Bach is my great love.
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Absolutely worthy great love!!!
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Lovely. Thank you. Michael Simms Publisher/Vox Populi
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Today I pause after my half hour meditation to watch the birds in the pines and orange tree between my son’s house and my ADU. A statue of Avalokiteśvara and a Native American stone loon are my companions in the house, an iron Kokopelli plays the flute by the new peach tree in my garden, and I will attend my pastor son’s Easter service at his small inner city church after breakfast. I appreciate the many flavors, can breathe their air alongside of my skepticism, bathe in the light of a spring day and relax into my unknowing. In my youth I attended Sunday school at a magnificent church in Pasadena where we filled the altar with calla lilies on Easter, brought on a visit from an Episcopalian minister to my atheist father’s disapproval, then a year of Catholicism ( without taking communion) with my maternal grand mother, then a year of Judaism, keeping semi kosher, going to Hillel, then nothing until I was a Baha’i for 20 years. I have been called a spiritual tourist and I call myself a sorta kinda Buddhist now, I revel in the beauty of nature, however it came to be, and sometimes pray to a god I may or may not believe in to stop this madness of hate and pain for humans and critters, those who create suffering and those who suffer. Dang. Sometimes I just blather on. Must figure out my Easter dressing for church where my son wears his tattoos and flip flops and delivers thoughtful sermons and music. Oh, and I remember the Easter camping by the Kern river when it snowed and dad burned holes in the sleeping bags trying to warm us with rocks from the fire ( no injuries) and we followed ribbons to find our Easter baskets and got to them before critters did, damn I love how VP sets me off, musings of an old gal.
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I love poems that send me off like this
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What a beautiful mini-essay, Barb. I’d like to see what you do with a longer meditative essay….
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Mostly I tap at my phone after reading something that moves me. I’ve put a few essays in my two part memoir, but I think most are in the second book. I still need to get up the guts to submit the first book.
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Yes, Barbara. A ‘spiritual tourist’ is a wonderful way of describing my journey too. Baha’i, kinda Buddhist – I was there with you. But I have settled to not knowing what it is, but I know THAT IT IS, and that I’ll be part of IT again. I am closer to that moment than probably anyone here. There was a Buddhist ‘tale’, which I’ll retell in my words as short as I can make it: God and the angels were kind of busy, talking, dusting, just doing stuff. When God stopped and said to his angels: ‘You know guys, I am just too accessible, too easy to find. People ought to have to go on a spiritual journey to find me, it’s good for their souls. Where should I hide to make this work?’ And the angels suggested all sorts of hiding places until God looked up and said, ‘I got it! I’ll hide a piece of myself in each one of them. That’s the last place they’re going to look.’
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“the spirit / that needs no church but lives in us all.”
Beautiful poem in reminder of the temples we are ❤
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Thank you all so much. Yes, Spring. Yes, renewal. May we all experience renewal and joy. And this: “There are as many paths to God as there are people on this earth.” Whoever said it first.
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Rose Mary is a flowing stream among the stones of history. Her poem explores how that stone can be shaped by human love and belief.
Her spiritual journey is one many of us have followed in our own passage.
I’ve explored her wonder-filled book, The Rain Girl, where Rose Mary describes hard things, as well as beauty. In one poem that approaches the Irish Troubles that continued for generations, her final words:
Keep watch.
The wolfdog is on the prowl.
I think, throughout her work, there is a reverance toward the beautiful changes and flow of life, but a warning too, of what we are capable of.
Yet, today’s poem is one of hope that lives in us all. Bravo.
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beautiful praise, Jim. Thanks for sharing it.
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Rose, you capture so perfectly the path so many of us have taken from our childhood beliefs to our denials to our personal spirituality, regardless of our original religious upbringings. Thanks for another wonderful poem.
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“yet another path into hope” – yes! The reminder that we humans– the same creatures who carry bombs and bullets — are also the ones who “transfigured heavy stone” and “created soaring music.” In the midst of news of all that is so terribly wrong in how we treat each other and the planet, you point to “the spirit that needs no church but lives in us all.” I am not religious, but am in awe of whatever it is that makes us seek and build and thrive on beauty. Yes, thank you, Rose Mary and Michael
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And this — this poem, combined with the video — yet another beautiful launch into the day. Yet another path into hope. Thank you, Rose Mary. Thank you, Michael.
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Yes, we need hope in this fraught time.
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“yet another path into hope” – yes! The reminder that we humans– the same creatures who carry bombs and bullets — are also the ones who “transfigured heavy stone” and “created soaring music.” In the midst of news of all that is so terribly wrong in how we treat each other and the planet, you point to “the spirit that needs no church but lives in us all.” I am not religious, but am in awe of whatever it is that makes us seek and build and thrive on beauty. Yes, thank you, Rose Mary and Michael
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“yet another path into hope.”. Yes! The reminder — how we humans — the same creatures capable of carrying bullets and bombs — are also the ones who “transfigured heavy stone” and “created soaring music.”. Today, in the midst of news of all that is so terribly wrong in the world, you point us toward “the spirit that needs no church but lives in us all”. Yes, thank you, Rose Mary and thank you Michael
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“yet another path into hope” – yes! The reminder that we humans– the same creatures who carry bombs and bullets — are also the ones who “transfigured heavy stone” and “created soaring music.” In the midst of news of all that is so terribly wrong in how we treat each other and the planet, you point to “the spirit that needs no church but lives in us all.” I am not religious, but am in awe of whatever it is that makes us seek and build and thrive on beauty. Yes, thank you, Rose Mary and Michael
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Thank you, Jennifer. I think there is a big difference between religion and spirituality. Religion is a set of tenets which are embedded in political institutions. Spirituality is the individual’s experience that there is a meaning larger than one own’s life. Poetry, music, architecture and the other arts are spiritual in nature and may or may not be religious.
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Agreed!
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sorry to be preachy… I was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention where silence is not considered a virtue.
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This just made me laugh. And of course no apologies needed
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Rose Mary: I am under your poem-spell, and in the full and ongoing onslaught of wild, violent, vibrant Spring: (I’m the Floridian in the Pacific Northwest for the first time this moment). It must have been no accident the resurrection was set in Spring, and your wonderful lines given to us this morning by a very wise man!
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Thank you, Sean. You are such a gift to all of us.
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The poem, the music, the architecture combine to make a powerful evocation of the Christian rite of renewal.
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