How can I hold on to this leafy scene
of emerald lights that, numberless, do glint
in glistening points at times more gold than green –
a scene that shimmers with each shade and tint?
Mirroring these leaves, the emerald tide
seems motionless, a glassy pool at rest,
till it meets a sharply riffled divide
whose race freezes in a curled, crystal crest.
How to possess these fleeting greens and golds,
that shimmer in and out of leafy heights?
Would that their beauty could ever abide
in verse, just as the crystal cascade holds
its crest, and, mirroring the green gold lights,
the watery leaves rest in the glassy tide.
Robert Youngs Pelgrift, Jr. practiced law in New York City for many years and is now an editor for a legal publisher, working in New York City. His poems have been published in various anthologies and in The Lyric, The Rotary Dial and The Galway Review.
Foxglove Journal 