Cecil Morris
The Fourth Time I Keep It to Myself
My daughter flickered like the holy spirit I imagined
when young and still devout, a waver of purity dancing
in the night of daily drudgery, in the space scorched by loss.
A blue filament of future possibility, of grace
unasked and trembling inside me, hidden, my secret alone
that I sheltered, hands cupping the baby flame, the tiny light:
she is she is she is she is and yet I feared that speaking would spoil
the mystery exploding in me, that single word misspoke
would send a puff of errant breath to extinguish her glimmer,
that telling would jinx the joy that flared unsaid and so I told
no one, not even the him that fathered forth the bit of joy
that might replace all failures past, until I had it sure,
until I had it sure, the tiny flame converted to flesh
for me to clutch at last, to press to my skin, to nurse, inhale—
and not be emptied out again, a hollowed vessel, echo
of cry and curse, another ache the only thing I can hold.
the final frontier
my paternal grandmother like melting ice cream
in ripples running slowly down, wrinkles sliding
to eternity, her pin curl perm at last relaxed
to exhausted shag, the color—a chestnut brown—
by millimeters draining to rainless gray clouds,
a dull and steady stasis that disguises
the onward Christian soldier march, relentless drift
and sizzle of time, her spot-speckled hands now still,
no spatula or tongs, no baking, no frying,
the chipped beef, the chicken, bone and skin and neck,
the heart and gizzard gone if not forgot in drone
of soap opera’s convoluted plot, her confusion
as thick as blankets doubled in her recliner
her inside gives nothing away
at our daughter’s autopsy, the doctor opens her
like a question and the comforting burr of bees
alive among mandarin blossoms in spring sun
rises, swells—a sound sweet and angry, freighted
with her story, chapters unbound—then black wings beat
as crows assault the air, a dark and noisy lift,
a plethora, too many for her narrow chest,
for the shrinking receptacle of our one girl,
who, more or less than glass, now gives all her secrets
to antiseptic air, to purple latex gloves,
to blood tests and magnetic poles, the blur of crows
in crowded tumult rise, a different kind of hide-
and-seek, the truth comes peek-a-boo, through feathers fanned
for flight, confusion of shapes and shades, to us still
the mystery she didn’t share in the twenty years
since she left our home, the golden straw of our girl
to woman spun, enigma machine idling
in the hall of don’t ask, don’t volunteer, don’t look,
this blonde stranger casting aside our hand-me-downs
of chin and eyes and long limbs and inside what else,
beside the crows, a chattering next of songbirds
at dawn or dusk, incomprehensible but bright,
the foreign language of siskin, junco, house finch,
perpetual blush and flutter, a palpitation
of wings so nearly weightless they float above her
and tell us no more than crickets do as day fades—
that night has arrived and day departed, the end
and beginning, everything at once as always,
and we have only questions and no answers,
no finish to our daughter’s ending, no final
revelation as doctor closes our daughter.
When Words Won’t Come
Since the explosion in his brain, the flash and freeze,
life has been a long list of crossword puzzle clues
in pantomime—extra cryptic and abstruse—
his frustration acted out again and again
with eye-rolling and exasperated sighs,
his brow furrowing finally to a puppy's
bewildered look, the one Darwin described
in The Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals, the melancholic omega.
He wears it when he watches golf and football,
the TV muted, his feet up. He wears it
when he eats. It breaks my heart to see that sad
signature.
We play now an unending game
of Scrabble where he draws only consonants—
the clumsy, tongue-forward sibilants, the labials
and angry dental fricatives, the puffs and stops
and choking. No vowels. No syllables rounded
with vowels. Just jagged gravel in his mouth,
under bare feet and tentative wincing steps
to former life. The words he knew fly from him,
the backyard finches flitting from our feeders
to hidden perches in oaks behind the fence,
to convoluted rifts and mysterious folds
in his injured brain.
When I Asked about My Father
My mother said my father was a ghost
and then said ghosts weren't real when I woke her
with tears at the ghost in my darkened room.
She told me she had no pictures of him
because he was smoke and would not hold still
and showed me how the smoke from our camp fire
shifted and danced sometimes following us
and sometimes fleeing. I silently begged
for it to come to me but then it burned
my eyes and made me cry. Sometimes she said
that I had no daddy at all, that I
was a half-made girl she got in a dream.
Sometimes she told me a star-bright fairy
brought me to her to keep her company
when thunder shook the night and lightning scared
the trees, and that secret, she said, meant I
had neither father nor mother but was
by magic made and could not tell a soul
or else they might think we were witches both
and expect me to be a perfect speller
which I was, mother's little gold star girl.
I asked and asked—this man who brought candy?
that tall man who came to dinner and played
his guitar until I dropped off to sleep?
the one who smelled of cars?—and kept asking
for the one thing she could never give me.
When I was in junior high, she told me
he was of the family Cicadidae,
which meant, she said, he burrowed in the earth
for years and years and emerged, if he did,
with great annoying noise, and she laughed.
When I went to get my driver's license,
I saw at last my birth certificate,
but, like my mother, it told me nothing.
Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and enjoy. He likes ice cream too much and cruciferous vegetables too little. He has had a handful of poems published in 2River View, Cobalt Review, English Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poem, and other literary magazines.