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.
This poem first appeared in The Gravity of the Thing.
Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press. Chapbook Coming Home with Cancer is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Press’s Delphi Poetry Series.
April Editor Roy Beckemeyer‘s latest book is Mouth Brimming Over (2019, Blue Cedar Press).
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