Rogers, Marian Armstrong

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.