Robert Pelgrift is an editor for a legal publisher, working in New York City. His poems have been published in various anthologies and in The Lyric, Rotary Dial, The Galway Review, The Foxglove Journal, The Waggle, Long Island Quarterly, The Eclectic Muse, Trinacria, Now Then Manchester and Blue Unicorn.
Where These Three Colours Meet
Where yellow, rose and blue meet, beauty is.
On a white page, just paint a band of red,
then lighten it to rose; and then try this –
apply a yellow wash below and spread
it till it’s just a tint that meets the band
of rose; now paint a band of light white-blue
beneath the yellow one; with a light hand,
lead blue to yellow, but don’t mix the two.
Now stop and just look at the sight of blue
and yellow, rose and yellow; now repeat
the rose beneath the blue, and you can see
the three colours meet once again; and you
can feel the wonder that these colours meet
each other in beautiful harmony
The Light of Saturn
Somehow, I feel great surprise as I see
through the telescope lens this brilliant sight;
from pictures, its shape’s familiar to me,
but now it shines in brightest gleaming white.
The tilted banded rings that one can see
in pictures surround an ivory sphere, grayed
with bands like a piece of clay pottery,
each band painted in a faint desert shade.
What could be the cause of my great surprise?
That the faint hues are overwhelmed by light?
Perhaps it’s that after eternity
and a lifelong search of the nighttime skies,
I’m alone in this dark quarter of night
with the sight known but never seen by me.
The Rescue of Ivanhoe
The brave franklins first force the barbican,
and then a thousand shafts and bolts overleap
the palisade, and the Saxon thanes span
the outer ward and assault the shell keep.
As wounded Ivanhoe lies in his cell,
the Black Knight’s axe splinters the postern gate;
jagged boulders hurled by the mangonel
strike hard and shatter the portcullis grate.
But still, at last, the walls of Torquilstone
fall not to bows or the besieging throng,
but to the blaze set by a lady, alone,
imprisoned, to avenge an ancient wrong.
In the flames, the thanes overrun their foe,
and thus is freed the Knight of Ivanhoe.
The Galway Review 