Another Coming
(with apologies to W. B. Yeats)
A sudden blow, the great wings collapsed, folded,
from flight to float, from motion to still life,
the bird indifferent on rippled water gliding,
the body now a feathered barge, serene
and regal, mallard’s iridescent head
and banded neck on high, aloof, above
notice of my displeasure, my distaste
at down left adrift behind or duck shit
that drops through my clear and once clean water
to settle in gray-green lumps. Well, I shout,
gesticulate, a child in tantrum loud,
but the mallard, unimpressed, points his beak
away from human glory of righteous anger
and slides, inscrutable, to the deep end.
Editor’s Note:
Please read Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” and “The Second Coming“. I fully recommend it to get this great piece!
In April When We Are Old
In this month of sonnets I lose my rhyme;
rhythm fails me; I can no more perform
the interlocking dance that once made time
conspirator, enemy, thing to scorn.
In those saucy by-gone days, our love green
did make of April, May, and June such delights
as March and December could only dream.
Yes, then in carnal pleasures we soared like kites,
but in this spring we winters go to bed
to sleep in comfort of proximal warmth
and snowy noise of partner’s gentle snore.
This joy unlike what we sought when we wed,
but joy it is, this promise kept, this troth
too seldom celebrated in our lore.
Praise Song for a Crying Mother
I would praise now her capacity to grieve
again and again, to keep inside herself
this one loss as buried tulip bulb or knife,
self-contained and full of intention. Look now
how she holds herself still in the vast void
of a daughter dead. I can not let loss live
in me anymore than I can catch and hold
a joy blooming. I am more roof than barrel.
The tears have run off, have spent themselves, have left
in me a drought. So I praise this aptitude
I lack. I praise her memory’s potency,
her ability to keep forever fresh
the apple of knowledge we did not seek,
to face and face this great loss at its peak.
Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English in Roseville, California, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (he hopes) to enjoy. He has poems appearing or forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, and other literary magazines.
Grand Little Things 