Bertha Rogers

Bio: Bertha Rogers’s poems have been published in journals, anthologies, and in several collections, among them Wild, Again (Salmon, 2019); Heart Turned Back (Salmon, 2011); and Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen, 1991). Her translation of Beowulf was published in 2000, and her translation and illuminations of the riddle-poems in the thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book were published as Uncommon Creatures in 2019. She co-founded Bright Hill Press & Literary Center of the Catskills in 1992; although retired, she still teaches literary workshops and edits poetry collections for the Bright Hill Press. She lives on a mountain in New York’s western Catskills.

IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

STUMBLE DOWN

It narrows—this ornate staircase,leads us to the last bed,the pillow, tangled sheets of disease.
We stumble down, hands slidingsplintered, breaking railslost to their own, forested origins.
This old man petitions air, one last cigarette.He demands immunity from the evil
he so freely dispensed, wants to sprint again,arms waving high in easy victory.
That woman contends she gave good when requested, never despised her speech-scarred days.
All together now, lungs beggingto retrieve the air they daily squandered.
Plague’s heavy weight, our own feet encased in death’s cratered stockings, break the final tread.

IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

DARKER AND BRIGHTER

Every August they promise, the fleetPerseids, to gift us with a glancewhile they shoot down the midnight sky. They do caution that conditionsmust be congenial—the dome ink black,the moon a silver sliver, the time just right. And then they loose their starry bodiesfrom the monstrous cosmos. Like every orchid’s stem, they let go all the finished flowers.

IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

SEEDLINGS

Nothing to come, nothing to see but burning grass, scorched leaves.
The bucket of flower seedlings holds, anyway, some scant hope
because something waits, someone forecasts, someone else
needs blooms all springs.
 So, bend, count pinned buds, predicted petals. Expect scent.
Open sleeping soil, insert the dangling feet of spindly fronds.
Shower them with god-water.

Then, bury them deep. It is air that, pushing too close
to their hungry roots, executesthese tender, buried youngsters;
Yet it is breathed air that gifts the flowered, bolstered virus—
words spoken, sung; glutted lungs coughing death.

Behind the magic mask—face that hides your own,
begging face—mouth pledging a prospect of gardens
all a-blossom, every counted summer.
Only believe.

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