Fall 2021
Chanting in the Country
By Marian Armstrong Rogers
Once I lived where traffic’s hum
was background music to crows fighting
in my fenced yard over crumbs;
planes roared their ascent, sirens shrieked
calamity, fume-belching buses herded
me to city center where summer sidewalk
bands trumpeted notes so solid you
might reach up, grab one, and tuck it away
against winter.
Here, mountains lean against
blood-red sunsets like illustrations in
a romantic tale; cows graze, quail
slip quietly through back woods, fearful
a cat will pounce; on a near narrow lane
signs announce: “Turtle Crossing.”
I stand surrounded by splendor in a place
so peaceful, so still, so silent, you could hear
a butterfly wing brush a leaf, while my
mind chants a litany of longing
for my city.
Marian Armstrong Rogers studied at Pace University and worked many years for the mental health services of Westchester County, NY. Her work has appeared in The Sun magazine; Writers’ Journal; Memoir magazine; anthologies; and in her memoir, Astonishments: Stories as True as Memory, which won third place in the Wordwrite 2016 contest for self-published authors. Now retired, she is most often found with a canary-pad and pen in hand or at her computer.