A grackle is poking its head in the porthole
of the white chapel bird house. Two house sparrows perch
in the pin oak branches above.
How will it have been for you when I’m gone,
such a poor excuse
for a father?
The grackle looks in on their nestlings.
More sparrows gather in the branches, spectators,
audience members when it’s their own brood,
it’s their own children on the screen. More and more
sorrows gather in the branches.
They’re paralyzed.
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 numerous 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 and chapbook Coming Home with Cancer is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Press’s Delphi Poetry Series. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.