Pausing for Beauty
Clawing
at leaves to spread
and
hasten their drying before
shredding,
I can’t help pausing
to
marvel at the colors of their demise,
a crazy
quilt enhanced by the wetness
of dew:
maple’s red, green’s tenacity,
Bradford
pear’s purpled curl
among
the honey locust’s gold,
kaleidoscopic
sassafras,
even the
nasty mulch of the early fallen,
their
oily hues glistening in the tines.
What a
glorious dying off is this,
so
unlike flesh and bone’s pale palette.
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.