Cameron Morse

The Stick

A delicate stick
braced just right among
three power lines
hasn’t moved since the day
 
we arrived, a wishbone
pinched between two fingers,
a stubborn hanging on:
the sky above, the earth below.



Strawberry Plants
 
Budding whitely
in soggy cardboard--
 
I raise their heads
above the shoveled
 
clumps, press down 
clammy soil
 
around their prickly stalks. 
 
It’s with the plants that
have clutched the
least dirt with their roots
 
I most think of hope
because they are
hopeless
 
and I plant them anyway.

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review, a poetry editor at Harbor Editions, and the author of six collections of poetry. His first, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other (Woodley Press, 2020). He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City—Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and two children. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.