The difference is not that it is light when I wake but birdsong added to the darkness lets me know I am no longer alone. Lili is usually not in bed beside me when my iPhone vibrates on the nightstand. One of our children is, or no one, and I have to go searching for my wife, passed out somewhere with the newborn clutched to her chest, who wakes often to check on us and make sure the song that surrounds her with warmth continues to play in the darkness.
Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of eight collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is The Thing Is (Briar Creek Press).
Guest editor Denise Low, MFA & Ph.D., was Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09. She won the Red Mountain Press Editor’s Award for Shadow Light. Other books are Wing (Red Mountain), Casino Bestiary (Spartan), and The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press), a Hefner Heitz Award finalist. At Haskell Indian Nations University she founded the creative writing program. She is a contributing editor to Essay Daily’s Midwessay project. www.deniselow.net
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 