Elizabeth Seydel Morgan is the author of four books of poetry—Parties (1988), The Governor of Desire (1993), On Long Mountain: Poems (1998), and Without a Philosophy (2007)
—all with Louisiana State University Press. Two of her short stories have been anthologized in New Stories from the South. Morgan's screenplay, Queen Esther, won the Governor's Screenwriting Prize from the Virginia Film Office in 1993. She also wrote a translation of Euripides's Electra for the Penn Greek Drama Series (1997). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Five Points, as well as online at Blackbird and Cortland Review. She is a winner of the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize and the Philabaum Award from LSU Press.
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August Evening
Silence rises
from the lower meadow
the bowed wet grasses
struck dumb by storm
but it can't hush
the monotonous drop
of the dripping gutter
on the metal shovel
Still
silence tries
in this interval
to insinuate itself
like steam on this wet deck
before cicadas come
then slip up through the crowd
of noisy trees—crickets, owls—
to fall, in the small dark hours.
from the lower meadow
the bowed wet grasses
struck dumb by storm
but it can't hush
the monotonous drop
of the dripping gutter
on the metal shovel
Still
silence tries
in this interval
to insinuate itself
like steam on this wet deck
before cicadas come
then slip up through the crowd
of noisy trees—crickets, owls—
to fall, in the small dark hours.
February Burglary
Winter's erasure outside
stem and leaf and petal missing
Inside the old house
spaces are full of space
colder than the weather
The Sheriff takes pictures of absence
says it's going on
up here, furniture
The old log walls
are accustomed to change
strangers, centuries
The windows watch
for different arrangements
inside and out
Winter's erasure outside
stem and leaf and petal missing
Inside the old house
spaces are full of space
colder than the weather
The Sheriff takes pictures of absence
says it's going on
up here, furniture
The old log walls
are accustomed to change
strangers, centuries
The windows watch
for different arrangements
inside and out