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"That Day" By Alice Morris



the day the snow fell hard like white rain

the day the jays

devoured the suet in the green cage dangling

from the back fence

the day the yard filled with cowbirds, martins and grackles

the day I watched the red-headed woodpecker

without a mate

fly from fence to dead peach

where he pecked away

thrusting head from side to side, then hammered

beak against branch –– this

the day I found my dog of twenty years dead

on the bare oak floor, positioned

to guard

the front door




 

Alice Morris is a Pushcart Prize & Best of the Web nominee. Her poetry appears in such publications as Delaware Beach Life, Broadkill Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Backbone Mountain ReviewPaterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, and in numerous anthologies. In 2018 she won The Florence C. Coltman Award for Creative Writing, and she won an award for a fiction piece. Also, she attended the DOA Seashore Writers Retreat. In 2019 she was a finalist in the Art of Stewardship contest, and she was awarded a second and third place for single poem, single short story respectively in the Delaware Press Association Communications Contest. Her poetry is forthcoming in Gargoyle, Rat’s Ass Review, Paterson Literary Review, and in an anthology. She is a member of Coastal Writers and the Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild. Currently, she is working on a first full-length poetry collection.

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