What’s Given, by Roger Pfingston

What’s Given, by Roger Pfingston

$12.00

He entered dementia, that town of strangers, / like someone sneaking in at night with baggage / that slowly disappeared

SKU: 978-1-944252-30-4 Category: Tag:

Follow the gaze of poet Roger Pfingston, as he takes in the passage of seemingly ordinary days in apparently unremarkable places, and watch the world quiet down, deepen, and ripple out.

NO GRASS

You’re a good American, he said, 
the man who cuts my grass, 
this after I tipped him a couple of dollars 
for his usual good job, 
always cleaning up after himself,

although it might’ve been more 
for the story he told of seeing 
a white horse deep in a green field 
while on his way here
from the small town where he lives,

how its whiteness increased 
as the sky darkened, the storm 
that passed south of us, 
and then, when he paused 
for the water I offered, 

we somehow got around
to his grandmother who lived 
here in town on 10th Street 
where the used bookstore is now,
how, when he was a kid, 

people would stop and ask 
if they could pray in her front yard, 
it was that meditation-friendly,		
bright bushes and small trees,
ground cover and two stone benches,

flowers, of course, more than he 
thought possible in such a small
space, and no grass, he said, 
wiping his sweaty face, 
no grass at all.