copeland morris POEM FOR STARS

Examine a rift in the darkness. Question the opposites;
For instance, the stars, and the dark night in which they dwell.
The tree that cradled the house could not protect it;

And the night is embracing the rafters and smoothing the stones.
The naked face is almost speckled with starlight
And meteors and shooting stars are the last enchantments,

The frenzy of desire alongside the irrelevance of it
Spinning and spinning and spinning the constellations.
Intelligence, emotion swept clean with a broom:

A ride in the car at night, the smell of alfalfa,
The rain-drenched aroma, the song of a meadowlark
Shot down by a boy with a pellet gun, as it sang

To its mate from a mulberry tree, and the tree cut down.
How late it becomes. The stars can vibrate and twinkle.
And the boy can remember the words on his father's lips

And see but darkly a tilted head against the night.

copeland morris DOVE SEASON

Between shadow and my twelfth year
The boys are face down in the grass,
September's pint-sized insurgents
Under dove season's gray sky.
Dying instead of shooting.
A report of their amusement
Is breaking: "Let's play like
We're shot by a firing squad
Back there in Benny's yard."
This game is not exactly ended
When grandma ladles out doves
And the supper table grows so solemn
And the boys are beset with warnings
To watch out for buckshot.