dividing time into waves,
you swim my dreams
with an azure of song.
Tell me the story of oceans,
of ice floes that calve
into northern seas,
of the exile of hope.
Legends of thirst
drink the brine one time,
then become the seasmoke
rising along my shore.
Tell me the elegy of water,
the craving for rain
that lives in the clouds,
the desolation of satisfaction.
(after Rimbaud's "L’Esprit")
Author Bio:
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam is the proud grandson of peasant immigrants from Poland and Syria. For much of his life, he lived and worked in the Detroit area, graduating from Eastern Michigan University (BA, MA) and Michigan State (Ph.D.). He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. Sam’s poetry has appeared in over 90 journals and publications and his poem, “First and Last,” won the 2018 Rebecca Lard Award. He has five published collections including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018) and Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson, the 2016 Grand Prize winner of the GFT Press Chapbook Contest. He currently teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College, from where he retired as President in 2017. He serves on the Board of the Virginia Poetry Society.