As Tart Cherries Are Still Sweet
Mistaken in waking to an old
room an old house vacated of
the same remembered colors
but waking nonetheless in some
sound startled from those dreams
sunlight at the wrong window
slanting an old way but off kilter
too angled low or too rose or too
much in the eyes to allow sleep
in its rekindling mistakes all lost
as the dog who tickled me with his
nose and puppy wriggling is lost
to a daydream paler than ghosts
in the night remembering me now
perhaps if memories can remember
the living we are as quick as this
sunlight at dawn now lost as well
in its rising room darkening
as the shadows of Dutch elms
long diseased and long hewn to
their absence there now here
now with the echoes of my old
dog barking lonely from his pen
up on the hillside where the five
black cherry trees no longer grow
thick with so many hungry birds
Geology of the Blue Ridge
All these lives have become
shadows in windows of granite
and metamorphosed volcanoes
and the layers of sediment:
shells, bones and all that's left
of these ancient breaths that
cry silence and seas from old
limestone in their broad uplifts.
All that we are must some day
be such silent and stony memory.
All of our crow flying, our black
silhouettes in brilliant blue skies.
All of our black bear eating
of black berries on mountain sides.
All of our doe darting from shadows
of cove forests, from maples
and beeches, from hemlocks
and poplars, from white oak
and red oak, from yellow birch
and buckeye. All of our vulture
soaring and scenting of death.
We who have eyes will catalyze
what we see in the memory
of such stone. We who have ears
will crack vibrations into the seams
of the uplift. We who have voices
will echo the morning mist as it rises
from blue gray valleys. We will mark
mountains with hoof, paw, claw,
scale, beak, root, leaf, hand.
We add to these mountains by our
bones, bodies, and all that is left
of our breaths turned briefly firm
before retreating to the essence
of our ephemera. All of our rutting,
our running, are waiting, our pouncing,
our standing on hillsides and valleys
at morning while watching new mists
rise from old memories of old lives–-
all in the end return to the rocks,
Thus we must learn to read pages
long written in layers the Blue Ridge
has transcribed from all of our living
and dying beneath their shadow.
David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years and has two collections, including Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves (2014). He lives in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. Recently, he was published in Carbon Culture Review, The Crucible, FLARE: The Flager Review, The Write Place at the Write Time, The Scapegoat Review, The Summerset Review, The Birds We Pile Loosely, and Literature Today.