Dirt
Third grade– Bring your pet to school day.
My pet– Sally, the yellow-spotted salamander.
Captured in a window well.
Kept her in a five-gallon steel bucket halfway filled with dirt.
Watched her tail grow back.
Lugged her in that bucket four blocks up to school,
and back. Blistered
both my hands.
At the age of ten,
having discovered that the earth held a coolness,
I started digging an underground fort.
Two large windows, abandoned
in the garden
would be my roof.
Provide panoramic views of sky.
Knee high in dirt pit,
sweat stinging my eyes, I begged brothers and neighbor kids to help.
They bombed me with rotten tomatoes.
Called me crazy.
As I laid my shovel down, looked
toward the flaming methane sky, there,
from his twelve-foot perch, in his chicken wire cage
was my brother’s talking crow, shrieking
my name.
White-haired now, I watch my dirt-covered hands pulling weeds,
gathering zucchini, cucumbers,
yellow beans,
as golden orb weavers
among vines
erase/re-stitch,
set bold white zippers
against the dewy stillness of early light.
The Logic of Grief
Blue and yellow mixed– makes green– this
is an artistic fact of life
unless–
there’s an added touch of pink and brown
which makes
a cherry tree
in Washington DC.
There are approximately 3,750 cherry trees
in Washington DC
which provide nesting sites
for thousands of eagles, therefore
naturally drawn
to live as close to the capital as possible
because eagles
are the symbol of this Great Nation (What a Celebration!) often hated
by disgruntled nations
who therefore (silently) conspire
against us
and thereby
use their calculated powers
and
our own
fully-fueled planes
to crash into
Our
Towers
thereby
turning my blue and yellow my green my pink and brown
into black and blue right between My USA–American eyes
therefore
causing me
and all eagles
to weep.
Alice Morris, a Minnesota native, earned her BS in English Education from Towson State University, and her MS in Counseling from Johns Hopkins. Her art has been published in a West Virginia textbook, and The New York Art Review. Her poetry has been published, or is forthcoming in The Broadkill Review, The White Space– Selected Poems, Silver Birch Press, The Avocet, The Weekly Avocet, and Delaware Beach Life. Her work is also included in two poetry collections, and two anthologies. She is a member of the Coastal Writers and the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild. She and her husband live in Lewes, Delaware.