Kiddie Pool Baptismal // Paradise
Poetry by Cameron Morse
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KIDDIE POOL BAPTISMAL
My feet dunked, I float
my Crocs, nurse
the spilt in my head
with trips to the spigot.
Heal me, sweet
mother, if you think
I’m worth it. Bless
the inventor
of water and one more
way to withstand
the summer.
Jungle cat rugs
of heat piled plush
on my chest,
I pluck off my T-shirt
and squeeze
rainbows out of a spray-bottle.
Theo empties cups
over my kneecaps, raising
the dark waterline
of soaked denim.
The more I resist the pastoral,
the greater
my urge to pastor.
PARADISE
I live in the garden.
Garden’s in the name of my neighborhood:
Country Club Gardens. My neighbors
plant flowers and flowering
trees. There are birds
here: robins and sparrows mostly,
then crows, always
crows. We hope for hummingbirds
and in that hope hang a feeder
among the tomato cages in the garden
in which I live. I like to recycle
cardboard and plastic. I tell myself
even if the companies are lying
to me and filling the land with my trash,
I am not wrong for believing.
The companies are wrong for lying
and that’s on them. Here,
in Eden, I have never golfed but every
morning golfers unsheathe shining
silver clubs. My boy and I admire them
from the roped off rock bed. The kingdom
of heaven is at hand. It is in hand.
Cameron Morse 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, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019). He lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.