Reverse Twilight
Twilight we have a word for. That’s the light left over after sunset. But the light before sunrise we have no name for, the reverse twilight: the prescient, pink eye of the east, the blind seer that says, “There is more.” I would be dead if it were not for the before-light of dawn. Thinking in the past perfect, the past was perfect, was good enough at least for me, for my part, I tried, but the pink sky doesn’t speak in the past tense. It says good morning, get ready. I’m not done with you yet.
On TV
Each raindrop ripples like a pond
on the wet deck board. Blood-
puddled. The stone dropped radiates
in concentric circles how we
return after shock waves to the still
heart of things, a rabbit standing
stock-still in the rain, the glass-eye
of the grass field’s ruminating
cow. Crisis is. Contains two is’s.
Sparked debate once raged
returns to silence. Sizzled out,
silence, today’s shooting.
A Family Portrait
Screams melt the faces of my children
in the basement at bedtime. Echo chamber.
Daddy’s on chemo. Already tucked in,
beside the finally sleeping newborn. And
here we have these kids who won’t stay in bed,
who still giggle somehow and chant about
our butts and burps despite their scowling parents.
Eventually sleep falls, or do we fall, asleep,
and sleep smooths out our faces? Before dawn,
the sky turns lavender. Bird sanctuary loud
in late May. Daddy huddles under a blanket awake.
Sipping coffee in cold air, guilty of a poem.
Cameron Morse (he, him) is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of eight collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is The Thing Is (Briar Creek Press, 2021). He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City-Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and three children. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.
