Our daughter is the ancient mariner
doomed to wander forever through foreign
scenes of dark despair, doomed by her own hand:
she shot the albatross of self with drugs
and watched it spiral down to living death,
to gray half life she hates but can not leave,
to stormy ride through waves and troughs with shame
hung round her neck, her feathered spirit
molting, limp, all promise shifting mist
that she can’t grasp. She drifts through A.A. meetings,
dead end jobs, and community service
on freeway easements in yellow safety
vests—her eyes vacant as the friendless sea,
as things she threw away: empty now, empty.

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Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English—mostly at Roseville High School in Roseville, California. He has had a handful of poems published in English Journal, California English, Poem, The American Scholar, and other literary magazines.

Photo: Eleonora Patricola