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Musing Half Asleep, a poem by Roger Pfingston


Musing Half Asleep
by Roger Pfingston

Pleasantly redundant, birds
chip away November darkness,
though some, like the crow,

are more industrial. Imagine
sitting down at a table of crows,
half a dozen blabbing non-stop

like one of those talk shows,
no commercials unless you
count another day’s molten birth

in a lingering drought, the slow-
passing clouds dialing down
the light on a gleaming spread

of frost … icing on a burnt cake.


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A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is the author of Something Iridescent, a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as four chapbooks: Earthbound, Singing to the Garden, A Day Marked for Telling, and What’s Given, the latter recently published by Kattywompus Press.