Poetry Magazine, Rosaly Roffman, February 2001

Poetry Magazine

Rosaly Roffman

USA

My Feet Become the Wings 
of a Bird I've Never Seen
   (For Gwendolyn Brooks 
    who Shared the Moment)

My life is on the verge of life;
with great blue heron feathers
I would become the great heron

Today when look down
I see my mother's feet
the disease that turned
the beany toes to wings--

Towards the end she abandoned
her blue scuffs, and said
they're never getting me
for operations, she never laughed

about anything that wasn't right
about being a queen and greeting
mornings with a series of dammits
about bunion rhyming with onion

I have gone barefoot for a long time
not waiting for my feet to turn wing
not expecting to wear glas slippers
mules, Robin Hood Boots or Roman sandals

But I want to tell all mothers
it's not your children's short shoes
or malnutrition or old poverty
that makes feet in middle-age turn East and west

It's bones telling stories of the great birds we were

-Gwendolyn Brooks came as guest poet to the university at which I teach (Indiana University of Pa.). In December of 1987, I had arranged a visit by Brooks and her schedule at the college at which I teach. On that day I received a call that my mother died. We were in the middle of a terrific blizzard and i couldn't get out of the small town where I taught nor out of the Pittsburgh airport. I thought I could just go on with the show. I told Gwendolyn, and in between classes I would collapse in her arms and we cried together. We were friends since that day--and I sent her a wrist orchid when she was honored by the Academy of American Poets in New York. They gave it to her at the dinner and she had them take a picture of her with her waving her arm with that single wrist flower and she wrote to me about the joy it gave her. She told me that she called her children from wherever she was no matter what. We kept in touch through the years.

-- R. Roffman

A Year After Death
I Wonder What Dead Means

On this island I get lost
once a day, once an hour
that's when I feel for her

come upon her photo--retouched

When portraits of nineteen-year-olds die
hundreds of other photographs go too
The Amish and Indians know the dangers

Mother cut into a circle
sits glued against a mirror
with pencils and coins in a tray

She is my somebody's mother,
nineteen in a yellow coat with yellow fur
--one of somebody's father's treasures

and with dreams come responsibilities
I take her from the glove compartment
keep her close to me in this Subaru

An artifact, she is not Saint Christopher
though 5,000 maniacs whisper
"Come little mother--you are something

Come Miss America--
you must cover your daughters with manna
and protect them on their journeys"

Not filled with sadness
but with my own future stoppage, I hold her
up to my car's own mirror, for my sister's sake

I want to know where it went
the beauty she is--was

(Publicaton Credit:  Z Magazine)

The Passionate Wife 
Addresses Sun Not Moon

Before sleep each night we dress for the gods
I take off with old circular motions
a blouse made for one longer in the waist,
you--the white shirt faded under your arm.

I would like the sun to make a noise
so we could hear it coming on its path,
without having to see rhythm in light,
that deserving sun with pah-pah music;
we, too, deserve music for the chicanery
of these quiet pah-pah limbs going.

If only we could celebrate birthdays
with smiling straight faces, understand
what well-meaning gesture is the blinking
of children bye-byeing at the door,
forgiveness alone not quite the issue,
nor paintings people collect of us
nor blessings that get issued for midgets
and giants. Wisdom is not talking talk,
or documenting pain, not just surviving
or contracting partnerships with blueberries.

Wisdom is not being ashamed of dressing
like fragile dolls in lying-down clothes
wisdom is listening to the sweetness of sun
making hoe-downing noises in secret,
helping us dance our blither into bright.

(Publication Credit: New Growth Arts Review Vol. 5)