Poetry by Cecil Morris

               ​Matheus Bazzo CC




Persephone Comes Back


When Persephone returns from death
of drugs, she is the finch's black eye,
the chip of night carried all day, all glint 
and shine but opaque even at noon.
She is quartz hard but fracturing, laced
with fault lines, occlusions cloudy, dense,
like rough weather frozen forever
in her, a storm's churn fixed.  A tourist
here now, our daughter drags dank tendrils
behind her when she moves, wisps and curls
of decay, of sun-dried September 
weeds fallen in crisscrossed thatch, in layers
compacted under foot.  She is doe's
delicate forelegs, impossibly
slender given the weight they carry,
tentative, cautious, filled with latent flight,
ready to spring off, like the finch's eyes 
that flick sideways when we try to see her.





Three Years after a Daughter Overdoses


Her ghost travels with us, silent, mostly hidden,
almost out of mind, following us through mountains 
and over bridges, the water, our speed, the dark air
we split, the doors we close, no impediments
to her.  She will appear suddenly, at any age
(well, from birth to 39), and squeeze our hearts 
to tears.  Like she did at 7 or 8, she loves 
to catch us unawares, a duty to be done 
but not and, as I said, hidden mostly, 
just as she was in life, a secret girl 
with a secret life.  In the silent house, 
alone awake before the slow sun spills 
a new day, its tumble of to-dos to distract,
I hear (I think) the sound of shuffling feet, 
the fridge opening gasp, the spoon and bowl, 
an auditory shadow play, her sneaking ice cream 
from my memory.  Teenage metamorphosis, 
from daylight girl to midnight cockroach, a preview
of life after life.  I rise, of course, to check 
and find the kitchen empty, dawn still distant, 
the old day not quite done.  When I return to bed, 
my wife says you heard her again, didn’t you.




Cecil Morris, retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, devotes his days to reading and writing poetry, to exploring green spaces, and to indolence and reflection. He has poems appearing in 2River View, Cobalt Review, Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poem, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.