RogerFogelman.com

With gaudy hues and happy honks,
The glossy ibis invades the Bronx.
The damn thing’s lost, he’s way off course,
To go anywhere near the Grand Concourse.

He’s seeking food, he needs a lesson;
He flies into a delicatessen.
They greet him there with ribald jibes.
They won’t believe he’s a glossy ibis.

The inhabitants of the concrete boredom
Ken the sparrow and know that at Fordham
The Roman eagle nests, and all over the prowl
Are tracks and roosting posts and rookeries
Of kosher fowl.

But the iridescent incandescence of a
gastropodophagous sprite
Symbolizing “rarity” should know better than to light
Within the range of BB-brains whose “Hark”
Brings more with BB-guns; so to the park
He flew, not sighted yet
Nor in my rhymes
Depicted. Lost, revolted, sick but still
Alive,
His telescopic eyes sight an executive.

“Please, sir” he says, “I’m no faker;
I’m a glossy ibis, how can I reach
Jamaica?”

The bird finds out—
He catches the F train.
He won’t go to the Bronx again!

A girl sits on a balcony; above her head,
Which, tilted, loosens a flood of hair,
Which she, conscious, has spilled unconsciously
From out of her mother’s grave, a small bird sits,
And closing its eyes from heat or ecstasy,
Literally climbs to heaven on her own voice.

Down below, flowerpots line the balcony
And wait to be wet so they can be dry again;
Lower down, gods walk in the streets,
Appear, are lost, and attract the attention
Of the girl, who is quite unconscious of the bird,
Having fed it, and besides, is Greek, and young, and fond of men.

This is how I remember it—with the sun not dancing,
Not playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, but pouring
Its light out down into the souls of men,
Which rose, and looked at one another, and said
“This is good; let there be light.” Which brings us round
To theology again, with the bird singing its eyes out
Over the girl sitting on the balcony above
The cool interior courtyard, and below, the men.

1960

A mind’s-length plot with thought was sown
in secrecy, but it has grown
Into—

Exotic spices, with strange faces
From having looked on distant places.
Gum Arabic, from the veins
Of noonday genii in heat-drunk lands
Or the hard-to-come-by foot
Of white-centred anise-root.
Baskets crammed with saffron wands—
Nutmegs jostle, hearty oaves,
Embarrassing the comely cloves—
From far lands they bear away
Coriander, caraway.

Names whose iteration bear
Parceled gusts of foreign air
Subtleties but half revealed
To the importuning field—
As within a woman’s mind
Broods one half of humankind.

High
In a blue glaze, a raptor wheels
Unresolved to kind, the breed gropes
On nut-stained pinions
A soundless sight
While the eye
Burns icy pride—
And earth smolders.

High
Noon! Shrill, shrill, impossible,
A cedarn copse has found
A sybil—‘til the miscreant jay,
Descendant of a winter sprite, outraged,
Vaults off, a querulous flash
Of frosty protest. The stifled silence
Pierced for a moment, swallows a soundless sigh. On the thin, blue
Back of the sky, fleecy feather-fingers float.

High
Tide! Taught, caught in the moment
A hover fly-crystalline lance, strained to a bell on net-vein
Sinews, — quivering glass—shelled memory
Of a softdown wind and a summer’s day—
The brown-eyed wonder and the fragrant stalk.
Indeed, it was just a scented wind ago
(But another day, another year)
When a young boy snatched at a hover fly, and clutched
In rumpled hands, the empty air.

Nothing changes—ever.
The insect drones a lazy paean to the sun
In the molten noon, and there is not winter.
But the brook is ice and the leaf is mould
Till the grass is sweet again. How to measure time—
Earth reborn, and flesh a year dissolved.
Again full cycle, and the fly is gauze on the garden walk—
And childhood’s done, with memories.

A bowstring taut with afternoon
The cricket cello deep within the walk
Where russet refuse frosts before the musing moon
Where waving weed surrenders shrill the strident stalk
And rustling weed reverberates with locust-talk

Goldenrod is squired in beggar’s splendor
And races through the tree-holes in a tippling rime
Heavy is the hickory and easy is provender
And gentian’s pensive cups resound with rhyme
When, in their depths, they snare the cricket’s chime.

Here comes The Freedom Train
Red, white, and blue,
Meaning freedom
For me and you.

Here comes The Freedom Train
Let’s give a rising cheer,
That we may still have freedom
With every coming year.

Lands will come and lands will go
But let this be understoon,
We will always cherish freedom words
Most cherished, “Brotherhood.”

— Roger Fogelman — 5th grade

The hummers nest is hidden so.
That only the parents know
How baby hummers grow and
Just where a Fairy would sew.

—Roger Fogelman-3rd grade???

The explosion of roses continues through the centuries,
Bears witness
To the incomprehensibility of beauty,
And all the roses that ever were
Are one gigantic rose, the bloom of time
And times yet to be.

And what the Greeks call the thirty leafer
Puts forth a faith in testimonial to itself,
But if beauty is its own excuse for being,
I would not wish to be there
When the Gardener comes,
To water, mulch or cut a few
To decorate the rooms of Eternity.July 31, 2009