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Pausing for Beauty, a poem by Roger Pfingston

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.