Empty of desire, perceive mystery.
Filled with desire, perceive manifestations.
—Lao-Tzu
Rusty spade, empty bird bath,
bowl of water filled for the dogs, emptied
for the birds, laundry tossed
in the nostril of the exhaust fan. For months,
I feel nothing. Write nothing
but prose. My father speaks of an underlying
mystery. How did my life end up here?
Frost bites. Dead skin flakes.
A white blister crowns my thumb. I used to run
naked in the blizzard
of my desire. Now I sit with arms full
of my son. Mother’s rake rasps
in the flower garden. Yesterday’s coffee filter
flops in the trash, still seeping.
I hear you talking from a great distance.
You are not the woman I married. Naming,
you are the mother of ten thousand things.
You call them crocuses. Green tongues part
oak leaves. Lick my hand;
sparrows, those black brown stirrings
in the wisteria vine. You call me Husband.
You call me Son.
–
Cameron Morse lives with his wife, Lili, and son, Theodore, in Blue Springs, Missouri. He was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6-month life expectancy, he entered the creative writing program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in over 100 different magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, and South Dakota Review. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press.