WRITING
The following is a sample of Roxanne Bogart's poetry,
with audio readings by the author.
The Time of Goldenrod
Perched in Suburbia
Autumn
Owlet
For more information, please visit the Published Works page.
The Time of Goldenrod
Entering the woods along a path well-trodden,
I step onto the footbridge
where a triptych of ripe maple leaves
brighten the streambed
amid a stone collage of brown, beige, and black.
Bluegill glide upstream in weak current,
scales refracting dappled light.
Just beyond the bridge’s end,
the meadow rises to brilliance:
Myriad torches aflame
below the undulating heat of midday.
My feet begin the circular path
around this fleeting floral yolk
as a red-tailed hawk cries,
soars above the autumn field,
for in every direction,
milkweed has yielded
to the time of Goldenrod.
© Roxanne E.Bogart
Perched in Suburbia
Robins perch as still life ornaments
on winter’s skeletal branches,
scores of them, staring west into the wind,
airbrushed, sleek.
Starlings, a century flock,
shoots east like synchronous arrowheads,
drops randomly, then loiters and pecks
at the fallen grass.
The mourning dove, motionless,
glued to the wire, faces me
in a stillness and grace
I interpret in myself as complacency,
an innate form of self-preservation,
an animal instinct for slowness,
preserving vigor for all that is to come.
As a single organism, the robins take to flight,
windswept with urgency. But one remains,
its deep orange breast facing
the fuchsia-streaked horizon,
as I sit facing the window,
slow and fast heartbeats merging,
hearing our own or, perhaps, no call at all.
© Roxanne E. Bogart
First appeared in the Burlington Poetry Journal Vol I 2007
Autumn
I stroll along the sidewalk
pasted with scattered leaves
by the moisture of recent rains,
like a child’s artwork,
some leaving only
smeared prints of beige,
damp shadows
of their existence.
Now fewer waves of light
pierce the muddy sky,
intensify above my head,
as hundreds of brilliant
lemon and mango sundrops,
maple leaves ablaze,
lit by reflected hues,
leftover slices of the spectrum.
The long, verdant days
of chlorophyll are fading
into fleeting glimpses of carotenes and
anthocyanins, when nature reveals
the brilliance of her shrouded artistry─then
the wind-blown tumble,
brown muck and seasoned stench
of death and decay by jaws and guts
of worms, mites, centipedes,
enzymes of bacteria and fungi,
earth’s ever-present animate fabric
churns and enlivens dirt with minuscule victuals
that bleed up through roots and trunks
into branches and stems,
leaves and fruit, nourishing
the limbs of all life.
My floating eyes absorb
the ephemeral beauty above,
the crush of time below,
as gravity embraces me on
the static, unyielding cement.
© Roxanne E. Bogart
Owlet
On winter’s shortest day
I see her land.
It could have been
anywhere and anyone
but today is here and I
stop to see her bark-hued body
with eyes of obsidian
meld into the barren branch.
Silent in stillness and movement,
she waits for a signal unknown to me
then, without warning, wings and floats
deep into the forest, beyond sight,
as I hear the one
who has summoned her
a screech from within:
her owlet enlivening
the cold, sculptured wood.
© Roxanne E. Bogart