birds in angles across the spruce and fir
the feathered flutter inside the quiet
thunder of sudden wing beats in the brush
the palpitations in small concussions
familiar surprises from pinwheel heart
how the body treats the mind when it turns
attention out and doesnt mind the strain
and scramble of ants as they lift and cart
both message and meal across the nameless
brown dirt of dailiness the endless back
and forth unseen and unremarked the score
uncounted til the tiny explosion
on inner road demands attention shouts
in jays complaining shriek or snakes shaken rattle
and scours clean philosophy and art
the then and there and focuses on now
inescapable dog whimper crossing
the forebrain with the slant of disaster.
Like a shooting star
she is gone gone gone—like wind that's blown
through trees and leaves and set them whispering
the bad news to all the squirrels and birds
in their branching high rises, like money
that's spent and dead, its skeletal remains
dancing, laughing on credit card statements,
like the dinner she missed, the food eaten,
re-born as energy or fat, dishes rinsed
and stacked beside the sink, like time that's ticked,
unspooling present endlessly to past,
a rope diminishing through limpid pools.
Like helium hope rising troposphere
to stratosphere and drifting out of sight
on currents invisible, beyond clouds
and eyes, a silent wish exhausted, done,
like pills swallowed, dissolving, diffusing
through the body's permeable membranes,
binding receptors, stilling cognition,
rocking the self in lullaby of warm
and dreamless sleep, like a child imprisoned,
enclosed in bars and walls and layered lies,
like a shooting star—she is gone gone gone.
After 37 years of teaching high school English, Cecil Morris has turned his attention to writing poetry, with poems appearing in English Journal, Cobalt Review, Ekphrastic Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Poem.