(This poem first appeared in Bluepepper, click here then page down.)

The past is a living room with comforting chairs.

The past will come back and tap you on the shoulder.

It leaks out of everything: green, yellow and orange.

Faulkner said the past is not even past.

The past is a chunk of life, completed and examined.

The past is an inscrutable block of concrete.

There are some words you’ll never really know,

some chapters you’ll never truly understand.

The past is a riddle you may not be able to solve.

The past is writhing with life, pulsing with energy:

drag it out and watch it kick and scream.

- © Elizabeth Morse 2023

Night Numbers

As a child,

I watched the shadows shift in my room.

They showed their dim teeth,

threatened with long fingers.

Lying there awake, 

I knew I couldn’t call out.

Whenever I had, my mother’s irritated voice 

persuaded me that I was wrong.

So I shut my eyes and counted backwards,

then ran through my times tables and powers of two.

Time was an integer. 

Sleep was infinity.

- Appeared in The Garfield Lake Review

Rock Collection

I thought it would grow, so I planted a stone. 

Snow was still outside in patches.

Pebbles eventually covered the yard and sidewalk.

Stones are the grief you don’t want to know you have.

Red rocks pile up on your doorstep.

They are useful as bookends.

My son had a rock collection:

glassy blue ones, phosphorescent ones. 

He would invent more with his incandescent mind.

Now there are just gray ones in his room,

under the dusty desk. The bed is gone.

Pebbles eventually cover the floor.

Snow is still outside in patches. 

- Appeared in Kestrel

White Shoes

Always keep your own bank account if you get married.  It never hurts.  I'm your mother.  I know these things.

Besides, the kind of man you'd marry wouldn't be trustworthy.  He'd wear white shoes and a shoulder holster, no doubt.  He'd turn out to be a salesman.  What would you do when the bill arrived in the mail?

You've never been very good with money.  And he'd probably talk you into something foolish I would have told you not to do.  Like moving to Argentina.  

What on earth would you do down there without me?

= Appeared in Blue Mesa Review and The Future is Now (Linear Arts Press, 1999).