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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
They hang like a beaded curtain
in a fortune teller’s parlor,
each buoy a bauble
from the sea’s own trove—
sun-faded,
barnacle-bitten,
unstrung from nets
that once strained tides for omens.
Now they sway in the wind,
rattling secrets and guarding
the doorway to elsewhere.
Who dwells behind the curtain—
a castaway witch, perhaps,
who brews fog in mason jars
and weaves seaweed into capes?
A fisherman’s widow still waiting
for him to return from
his final fateful voyage?
Or maybe no one at all,
just wind and longing
and salt-stung light
curling around a chipped enamel cup.
Or maybe an infinitely
unfolding maze that traps
who enters in eternal twilight
where each corridor breathes
with the hush of retreating tides,
walls papered in kelp and longing,
ancient air that smells of old shipwrecks
and unanswered questions.
Some say you can hear a voice
calling your name—not as it is,
but as it was
before you forgot
what you came looking for.
And yet the house remains,
perched above the tide line,
porch sagging like an old shoulder,
paint peeled by salt and time.
Through warped windowpanes
the ebbing light still flickers—
not warm, exactly,
but not unwelcoming.
Seagulls gliding in a gyre.
A foghorn’s distant intonation.
And always, the buoys tapping,
as if to say:
You’re closer than you think.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
She might have painted the sea—
or a golden field of wheat
beneath a hazy summer sky—
but he took her brushes,
left the bristles splayed,
the paints dried out,
and the turpentine cloudy.
And though she said nothing,
her easel disappeared one day
like a wispy cloud no one missed.
After that,
she painted nothing but dinner.
They had imagined themselves
sharing a studio but
he needed all the mirrors,
so she became one—
reflecting his genius,
and tilting her angles
to catch his best light—
sitting quiet in the corners,
while her palette faded slowly
beneath his brilliance.
She never called it giving up—
just life, unfolding.
Maybe she took comfort
in recipes, in the hush
of rising dough,
in setting the table just so.
But I wonder if sometimes,
she’d pass the studio
and something nameless would
tighten in her throat—
not quite regret,
not quite peace.
Perhaps both.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
Mystic dancer in the firelight,
spinning, swirling as her soul takes flight,
chasing spirits on an astral plane
and catching them to call by name.
Perspiration beads on her skin,
arms spread like wings of her peregrine,
bracelets jingle and scatter light
and she dances late into the night.
Drummers beat out a strong tattoo,
her tempo quickens, her heartbeat too,
as visions spiral around her head
conjuring spirits of dancing dead.
She slips the veil without a glance,
and shadow-selves begin their dance.
Her falcons carve the moonlit air—
and now she's flying, wild and bare.
The fire sends embers up like stars,
she soars past Mercury and Mars,
hearing old songs in tongues once known,
and bringing back silence, but not alone.
She settles to Earth in the deepening night
as the fire burns low, no longer bright.
A blink, a smile, and her trance subsides
as prophecies in her eyes abide.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
In one corner of your room
you’d hung a faded photograph
of Charles Lindbergh and his plane
in sepia
covering
a lighter-colored square of wall
exactly the same size.
He looked so dashing
with his scarf and smile
but his eyes were dark and sad
(like yours)
beneath his aviator’s cap
and it was signed,
“To Mildred.”
Why did you hang it?
Did you dream of flight
as you plowed the land
on your John Deere?
By the time I thought to ask
about the picture’s story
you’d already flown too far ahead
for me to hear your voice
above the wind.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
My knee was a cracked hinge,
each step a bargain struck with pain.
The canyon walls pressed in,
heat still rising from the stone
long after sun left it behind.
Halfway to the distant rim,
I flopped down on the trailside bench—
the slats grabbed hold of my full weight
as if they meant to keep me.
And then I was above it all—
a silver thread, the fragile link
between breath and beyond.
The air was full of silence.
I saw how easy it would be
to just…let go.
But I didn’t.
I woke like a question
and kept climbing.
That’s when I saw him—
a black shape on a branch,
watching me with one white wing
like a secret not yet spoken.
He followed at a distance,
hopping from shadow to shadow,
his pale-marked wing flashing
like a faint lantern
just ahead of my pain.
Every time I faltered,
he circled back—
a silent reminder
that upward was still possible.
Step by breaking step,
he kept the vigil—
lifting off when I stumbled,
landing just far enough ahead
to pull my spirit after him.
No moon marked the trail,
but the leaves wore a ghost-edge
of nearly invisible light,
and his white-barred wing
gleamed like a promise
I hadn’t yet earned.
At last, the rim broke open—
a dark horizon against
impossibly myriad stars,
edged in silver breath.
And the raven,
faithful as my own shadow,
rose into the thinning night
and did not return.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
Where to begin?
Perhaps with the hum of the drill
lurking in some unseen chamber,
already rehearsing my name?
Or the taunting clock counting down
the minutes?
I’d like to write a poem
about something else besides
dentistry but this is the
loudest thought I’ve got
and it’s already wearing
my favorite shirt
and deciding if the black flats
or pink sneakers
will be more forgiving
when I’m walking out numb.
I don’t want to go and I
don’t want to be late
at the same time.
It’s a complex philosophy
for someone who hasn’t even
picked out her earrings yet
and still hasn’t decided
if she’s brave enough
for mascara today.
Soon enough, with keys in hand,
I’ll step into the waiting day—
the brave face applied,
the sneakers sympathetic,
and fate already flipping
the open sign.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
Eroded,
undercut,
sagging for years beneath the weight
of a dead sycamore,
the bank gave way
when the lake was closed
and the dams opened up
during the winter overflow,
leaving the tree offshore,
hunkered down in the water,
half submerged,
its white branches groping the sky
like a blind spider waiting to prey.
The boat just happened to be there
(its outboard, suddenly crippled,
useless against the current),
swept like some hapless insect into a web,
fought for awhile then capsized
in the spider’s embrace,
dumping him unceremoniously into the drink,
dragging him under
half unconscious,
battered by the tree,
swept into the channel,
a red General Motors hat
bobbing ahead of him downriver
like a beacon buoy
before it sank from view
waterlogged.
Time passes slowly underwater.
After struggling in and out
of consciousness,
rising and sinking
for what seemed like hours,
snatching only ragged gasps of sky
to drag down with him,
water and despair overlapped him
one last time
and he decided to breathe
to get it over with;
Lucky for him
the boy from the trailer court
had stolen a boat to go joyriding
or it would’ve been.
Later,
shivering in his wet clothes
in the back of the boat
(so the boat was stolen?
Morality is relative
sometimes)
everything around him was
[(closer) (more remote)]
at the same time
and he noticed
(idly, smiling)
that his Timex
had taken a licking
and kept on ticking.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
A cold, snowy night in Advent.
I kneel at the altar, alone
in the church warm with the breath
of old wood and worn prayers.
The pages of the book
soften under my fingers.
Behind me, the silent nave.
Still, I speak the words aloud,
as though the empty pews listen,
as though grace leans in,
hungry for a voice.
And in the middle of the prayer, a stirring—
a rustle, silk against silk,
wings folding, unfolding,
settling after long flight.
I pause,
the air behind me pregnant
with more than incense.
Then, slowly, I turn.
And the hush holds me—
not absence,
but a fullness beyond measure,
hosts without number.
No faces to see.
Only a deep,
holy stillness that sings:
"We are here.
We have always been."
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
She appeared beside me
before I could climb on
the shiny palomino—
barefoot, bright-eyed,
with a plan already forming
behind her charming grin,
so naturally I let her
canter first and then I’d take the reins.
She rode it with unstudied grace
and I was mesmerized.
We talked of stars and silver ships,
of other worlds and Laika—
the brave little dog
who never came home—
but must have found a garden—
on another planet—
with open fields and softer skies.
She rocked on, lost in orbit—
hair lifting with each gallop,
the world beyond the saddle
fading into breeze and stardust
as time trotted on unnoticed.
And when the rocking slowed to stillness,
she hopped down easy as a sigh,
thanked me with a quick bright smile,
and gaily skipped away—
off to find new wonders waiting
hid in the shimmer of the day.
I stood there, nickel spent,
half-laughing at my luck—
had I just been bamboozled
by a spacefaring femme fatale?
Perhaps.
But I’d talked with a girl
who knew the stars by name,
and I decided
that was worth the ride.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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Roxanne Andorfer Poem
In the book nook I found it—
a face no bigger than my palm,
leathered and silent,
its eyes forever pressed shut
against whatever it had seen.
Grandma said a missionary friend
brought it back from a place
where spirits walk in daylight.
On the dining room window sill,
a dozen squat green strangers
kept their spines to themselves—
silent travelers from the Southwest
when my dad was still a boy,
and I heard the first call
of the desert.
Her chairs wore lace crowns
like saints at rest
or queens without courts.
I thought maybe macassar
was a sickness you caught
from leaning back too far.
So I sat up straight and careful—
not ready to die of comfort.
The sink had no faucets—
just a hand pump I wrestled
until water gushed up cold.
Beside it, Grandma’s lye soap waited,
rough as a scab, yellow as old teeth,
melting slow in a cracked dish.
It smelled like something old
being made clean again.
And once, on a snowy afternoon,
I found a wooden kaleidoscope—
not colored glass and beads,
but prisms and clever mirrors
that turned the parlor lamp
into a slowly unfolding star,
spinning lambent silence
across the ancestral hush.
I didn’t know then
how a house could hold its own prayers—
uttered in lace and iron,
in spines and stubborn blooming,
in water wrestled from the earth
and a small, hard bar of grace.
But I remember now:
it listened, even when no one spoke.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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