THE FRAGILE WORD
The crystal rainbow shatters…
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.
The crystal rainbow shatters…
O, little dove, have you flown so far you’ve lost the way in your lonely flight. Can you now wing back to that Star leaving behind the sullen night?
The tree flamed a lone amber flower on a silent plain…
A poet is born, not made yet the poet must be made…
Great Antares so lately warm and glowing…On the summer…throat of night
Long had he walked the silent way….before the horde…casting curses and verbal stones…
The halls of the heart have templed walls where secret gods abide…
What makes your wild-fire heart cry low, calling for the gypsies so?
…memories for the heart…
…The seas flinging, frothing with foam toss in fitful slumber on their white sand-beds. The moon is ghastly, flees across a blackened sky…..