Dark beneath the surface,
water flows blindly
through stone caverns.
Here we harvest
crops of limestone,
fans blowing false wind.
Weak lanterns light
our brittle shadows
that stay in two dimensions.
We surface only
for moonlight,
pallid echo of the sun.
Rain comes in rushes
of our buried Styx
tasting a new sweetness
of the earth
it has seeped through
to reach us.
This is what we live
after the abandonment
of the surface.
This is the darkness
that pales our flesh
and weakens sight.
We are those who
went below
in true belief–
now translucent
as a forgotten thought
after silence.
_________________________________________________________________________
DAVID ANTHONY SAM
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and in 2017 retired as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has four collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 70 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize. In 2017, he began serving as Poetry Editor for GFT. www.davidanthonysam.com
Twitter: @dasam
In 2017, his poems were accepted by 50 Haikus; Aji Magazine; Allegro Poetry Magazine; Burningword Literary Journal; Chantwood Magazine; The Deadly Writers Patrol; Dual Coast Magazine; Foliate Oak Literary Magazine; Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review; GFT Press One in Four; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Gravel: A Literary Journal; Heron Tree; The Hungry Chimera; Into the Void Magazine; Inwood Indiana; Literature Today; The Muse: An International Journal of Poetry; The Mystic Blue Review; Piedmont Virginian Magazine; Poetry Quarterly; The Ravens Perch; Red Earth Review; The Sea Letter; Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine; Summerset Review; Temenos Journal; Three Line Poetry; Two Cities Review; The Voices Project; The Wayfarer; and The Write Place at the Write Time.
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