by Cecil Morris
In today’s news those three objects shot down
still unidentified but (probably) not UFOs
from foreign planets trying to slip across
our porous border through our thinnest air.
We know they were not occupied or weaponized
but not what they are (or were before we shot
them down to question later out of our caution
abundant). Say, if they could so stealthily float
through interstellar space, might they contain life
(or weapons) which passeth our feeble earthbound
understanding, something as invisibly small
and dark as a seventieth degree virus unknown
to us? Would a jet-fired missile kill such a thing?
Maybe they were errant, early Valentines lobbed
through the troposphere like the brightly colored cards
that we dropped in each other’s brown bags in first grade,
innocuous declarations of we knew not what—
some intimations of wonders in the world,
of mysteries we did not at seven comprehend.
So much of life continues to exceed our grasp
like this, from the morning news: three students left dead,
five injured in year’s sixty-seventh mass shooting so far.
Retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, Cecil Morris has turned to writing poetry and has had a handful of poems published in Cobalt Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hole in the Head Review, Poem, The Talking River Review, and other literary magazines. He divides his time between the currently arid Central Valley of California and the Oregon coast.
Bullets into Bells 