January 2020
Bio Note:
In 1976, I moved with my family to Fairbanks, Alaska to teach for a year in the creative writing program at the University of Alaska.
I’m still there. I’ve published six books of poetry, as well as a collection of essays. My work has appeared in The New Yorker,
Poetry, The New Republic, and many other journals. For more information, visit my
website: www.johnmorganpoet.com.
Walking Past Midnight
for Linda Schandelmeier
Dusk in the arctic whistled me
out of bed. I felt its feathers
brushing by. Moon pink in the west;
a solitaire's call, a thrush.
I saw a rabbit freeze on the road,
heard a dog-pack howling. I love
the motion and the smell of spruce,
but this is not a walk that
gives much pleasure. My thoughts keep
straying back to what you said
about your baby's whimpers—like a
damaged animal's...and when her doctor cut
to find the elusive vein, you had to
flee the room. Then, as they rushed her
down the hall in shock, the pain
it gave you fevers in my mind:
meningitis. Deep in the bloodstream
one black ship's enough. Mild
fermentation in the air. This is
the light that leaks across the pole
at two a.m. in June, a watery light.
I dip below and bring up bits of
childhood like small fish the great
whales herd, and harvest with a blow.
And from the other side of life's
division, I think of Jeffrey's pride at
four, leaping from a seawall to the beach
while I stood by and watched him
break his collarbone. At the bottom
of the hill I turn and for a while
tilt with the body's knowledge
of its route.... They flushed your
baby's blood with bottled blood and
sat with you the night. Now Mara's
home, her head of rough black hair,
round face and active eyes. Deprived
of your bereavement, teasing death
holds his mirror up to nothing
and is gone. Another thrush
trills bravely to the dawn. Stiffly
the rabbit stood as I approached,
then dashed into the woods.
L.A. Apocalyptic
Out my hotel door, around the corner,
what’s this?—a gathering crowd held back by
yellow tape as down the hill an ambulance
wails, screeching to a halt mid-intersection
and from the back five men in kaki leap
and crouching open fire, a rat-tat-tat,
a rat-tat-tat, while people dive for cover,
two cop cars skidding to a stop collide
and mayhem reigns.
But then it’s over.
Bad guys lower their machine guns, loaf and chat,
while I pull out my smart-phone camera, shoot
the aftermath, as the dead actors rise,
the ambulance backs up the hill, and true
cops wave the Sunday morning traffic through.
“Walking Past Midnight” appears in my recent book The Moving Out: Collected Early Poems from Salmon Poetry.
“L.A. Apocalyptic” is included in my forthcoming book
The Hungers of the World: New and Collected Later Poemsfrom Salmon Poetry.
“L.A. Apocalyptic” is included in my forthcoming book
The Hungers of the World: New and Collected Later Poemsfrom Salmon Poetry.
©2020 John Morgan
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