Grace Notes

Suzanne Morris

November 23, 2021

In music scores,
nonessential ornaments

sometimes occurring just before

the principal notes
and printed tinily with a

slash through them

as if to say
Never mind,

this is a nice touch;
however,

not all that important
in case you overlook it.

But to me, grace notes
might be instead

the small blessings in life
that catch you by surprise,

and are often soon forgotten
in favor of larger ones,

like the first tinkling of rain
after a long dry spell

before the real downpour begins

or the plane you didn’t miss–
only just barely– when

rushing home for your
favorite aunt’s funeral,

or the bone you didn’t break,
after all, last night

when your feet got tangled up
in the water hose

and you fell down hard
on the pavement.

Suzanne Morris is a novelist with eight published works, most recently, Aftermath (SFA University Press, 2016). Until recently, her poetry appeared only in her fiction. However, last year she was invited to contribute seven poems to an anthology entitled No Season for Silence - Texas Poets and Pandemic, (Kallisto Gaia Press).