FOR THOSE OF THE ALTIPLANO
EL Nino in capricious mood had made a desert, bare as moonscape, and life-springs fade….
On the Altiplano
Margaret Roxby was an award-winning poet published internationally in poetry magazines and anthologies, in addition to her two chapbooks, Glass Rain, Golden Rain and Medley. She was a fellow with the World Poetry Society International, local chapter board member of the National League of American Pen Women, and active in the California Federation of Chapparal Poets. She was included in the World Who’s Who of Women, Yearbook of Modern Poetry (1971), and International Who’s Who in Poetry (1971-1973). Margaret was often requested to speak on poetry and to present book reviews to local organizations. Her favorite quote was, “God, you have been good to me. You gave me a love of poetry.”
Margaret also dabbled in prose publishing articles in the Sunday supplement for the Long Beach Independent-Press Telegram newspaper, Los Fierros, a publication of the Los Cerritos Docents. She had a long running column for LBCC General Adult Division newsletter. She authored several more articles, short stories and a science fiction novel.
Margaret was a native of West Virginia where she worked through the 1930’s depression as a typist/clerk typing 200+ wpm. After marriage and the start of WW2, she moved with her husband to Long Beach, California where she worked several years as a secretary. Margaret served several years as a Camp Fire Girls leader and was elected the area’s PTA representative to the state-wide convention. When her son was ready for pre-school, she enrolled in LB City College studying psychology and later creative writing with Alice Wright, founder of a popular, long-running writers’ conference hosted in Long Beach.
EL Nino in capricious mood had made a desert, bare as moonscape, and life-springs fade….
On the Altiplano
The stories, sordid and old, building-engulfed…have stuttered into quiescence…On lyric twilight; then with darkening plunge swims into night’s nebulous song…
How can I explain my heart when my child runs across to throw herself headlong into my open waiting arms.
…Sculpted straight strong with stone veil a blue shield…Do you sorrow?
From over the mountains of a far-off land Hills of Inyanga call…
On the great ruined ball hurtling in futile orbit through timeless lightless space…
rivers of death writhed…
Strange were the hands that made them in the brooding sun-gold realm: secrets…
Dear Poet-Friend:
My poem is lost, or forgotten, or worse yet, not ‘noticed!’
…the story was told to me when I was a child. the story of the song, of the gold-voiced uncle, the sweet tenor-voiced boy….
… PUNISH! MAKE! FIT!….