The Photographer Considers His
Mother’s Gift
Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. His most recent chapbook, What’s Given, is available from Kattywompus Press. New poems are appearing this year in I-70 Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Dash, Passager and Front Range Review.
His mother
was a squatter
well into
her eighties, adept
at
crouching to a tight fold:
rummaging
a bottom cabinet
for that
now-and-then pan,
edging the
grass away
from the
sidewalk,
even
patiently removing
the tough-minded
dandelions
in the
rock driveway, her stand
against
Roundup and other
killers of
flora and fauna.
Genetics,
of course, but also
his early
years of watching her
do what comes natural…
thus his
tinkering
with the
underbelly of the mower
or just
hunkering down because it
feels
good—a meditative stretch
at the
lake’s edge—and always
those
butt-low shots like yesterday,
moments
after a truck pulled away
in the
Kroger parking lot, oil slick
shining up
at the camera’s eye—
a
rainy-day puddle glazed
with a
dark rainbow.
Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. His most recent chapbook, What’s Given, is available from Kattywompus Press. New poems are appearing this year in I-70 Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Dash, Passager and Front Range Review.