to mud all memory
while the dead lie
in distant eating earth.
Here I await low
clouds to second dawn
sun from gauzed gray
as sparrows huddle
where melts of bread
are almed them,
sacraments kneaded
out of my kitchen’s flour.
All rain here is sterile
for those dead who
cannot reseed from remembrance
to tendril far deserts
where black promises
bleed distant headlines
like stillbirths
buried in furtive night.
There skies burn arcs
of rockets across a boundary
the soil does not recognize.
Here rain fails to answer.
This world is as young
as it will ever be.
The dead lie useless
in the sterile earth.
And I am forever childless by
separation and loss
as everywhere the children
vest themselves in easy death.
Author Bio:
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He now lives in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and serves as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has three collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the inaugural issue of Light: A Journal of Photography & Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 60 journals and publications. His 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.