Caesura
Another poet asks me
if my mother’s death
is a line break with a period—
grief a full stop—
or is it followed
by a comma,
syntax unbroken.
I don’t yet know.
I must edit this summer.
I write my days
in the voice of an orphan.
Leaf by the Path
An insect has eaten away
your chlorophyll flesh,
leaving only veins and the edges
which held you together.
You look like the leading
of a stained glass window
with the glass broken out
or like the empty eyes
of a child I know.
Wilda Morris, Workshop Chair, Poets & Patron of Chicago and Past President, Illinois State Poetry Society, spends part of each year in Wisconsin. Widely published in print and on the Internet, she leads poetry workshops for all ages. Her blog (http://wildamorris.blogspot.com/) provides a monthly poetry contest for poets.
Portage Magazine 