Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
—Simone Weil

For my place at the rusted guardrail
above Falling River, I climb out

among the stopped cars
of strangers and supplicants

on the riverside walk,
leaving my hiking boots in the car.

Flowing water licks the ankles
of the great elk that has waded

into the current of tongues
to eat leaves off a fallen aspen.

His antlers branch into a candelabra
of bone and, as evening darkens,
his white rump fades

in the interceding lens
of my attention.

Cameron Morse taught and studied in China. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2014, he is currently a third-year MFA candidate at UMKC and lives with his wife, Lili, in Blue Springs, Missouri. His poems have been or will be published in over 50 different magazines, including New Letters, pamplemousse, Fourth & Sycamore and TYPO. His first collection, Fall Risk, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press.