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 Review, Paterson 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.