Rosemary Royston lives in northeast Georgia. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Alehouse, Literal Latte, Public Republic, and Dark Sky Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Award, her chapbook was a finalist in the 2009 Jessie Bryce Niles chapbook contest, and she was the 2004 recipient of first and third place in poetry, Porter Fleming Literary Awards. Rosemary holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and serves as Program Coordinator for NCWN-West.
As Poet of the Month here above the Frost Line, Rosemary Royston has agreed to share some of her poems with us. If you enjoy them, and I am certain you will, please leave a comment. More of her poems will be featured as the month of November moves forward.
Shore
We walk down by the water.
She needs no help identifying
tracks on the sand: dog, deer, horse.
Who is she, this young image of myself
the strong jaw, the Eastern European bones,
the girl whom I once carried in my body,
breech at 9 months, cut out of me on a cold March
morning. I remember asking to see the placenta,
the life force, which had been plopped into a thin,
plastic bin. It was liver-colored
with smooth edges. Eleven years later is now.
We find a tiny springhead in the sand
and place our fingers in the center—
bottomless, yet full of life.
--Rosemary Royston
Dogwood Winter
Ants raid the bath, wasps claim the washroom,
even as the cool of winter looms.
The forsythia sings against a chorus
of green, yet the hue of winter looms.
The bunting’s a blur of vibrant blue,
off-setting winter’s gray loom.
Calves nurse in the open field, chilled
as the nip of winter looms.
Blood buds of azaleas burst forth
even though winter looms.
The creek hums a rain-filled song,
oblivious to the winter that looms.
Rosemary, thyme, and sage grow
in the sunroom, even as winter looms.
--Rosemary Royston
Previously published in
ECHOES ACROSS THE BLUE RIDGE
Saturday at the Park
No vehicles, skateboards, or bicycles allowed.
-Sign on walking trail
Etched across the metal are angry scratches
over the word skateboard.
The cyclists don’t seem to care
that they cannot ride down the gray paved path,
but the skateboarders are pissed.
As if for concession a former tennis court
has been retrofitted with ramps and rails,
and the future Lords of Dogtown,
their boxers visible over the top
of their pencil-tight jeans, ride.
Their long hair is cut at odd angles
and dangles in their eyes.
The knees of their jeans are blown-out,
and one young man is bold enough to ask
Do you have a Band Aid? as if a band aid
would stop the bloody stream running
from his elbow south. Instead, he wraps
a flannel shirt over his wound and wheels off,
the slap and scrape of wheels on concrete
making a music of their own—
testimony to tenacity.
No matter how many times they fall,
they get back up, determined to perfect
the kickturn, the Ollie, the 360.
So I don’t complain when they come whizzing
down the pedestrian path
because they are poets, poets of the park.
--Rosemary Royston
