On the Beach
		
	In the dark you can still hear waves
	in a seashell, and all across the world
	the current goes on and on,
	oblivious to the highway of your life,
	where redundancy bleeds the black
	asphalt in stripes of yellow or white.

	And from a distance the stars,
	and the great moon are like wounds
	that never seem to heal, those eyes
	beating down with a persistence sharp,
	but not burning, a hate that slowly fades
	as the sun breaks the horizon,
	and in his customary gesture
	strips the darkness from us 
	in long silhouettes that set out running
	like wild stallions across the landscape. 

	Sipsey
		
	Some miles out in the wilderness
	we found Johnson cemetery, the August 
	air cutting our lungs like the chiseling 
	of head stones would have it's carver's 
	hands a century ago.
	Our camping trip waited to bloom 
	like web catepillars hugging 
	the understory treetops,
	and I remembered the neighbor's
	child crying a song he made for them
	when his parents burned those nests
	out of the lower limbs of their pecan
	(only he could see a butterfly waiting)

	We cooled ourselves in the shallow river,
	but as we sat watching a wild boar 
	feel it's way along the opposite brush, 
	I felt a tiny army of seed ticks rising up
	my briar torn legs, as my friend's eyes 
	did with a fear he's known before, watching 
	his cousin die from Rocky Mountain fever. 
	Later, they still didn't know how he pulled
	through, though it seemed some small 
	push at the end saved him. 
	Perhaps as it did me, years ago, 
	leaning over a cliff a little too far, 
	the soft wind whispering back, "Not yet". 

Sam Calhoun is a native of Gadsden, AL and holds a B.S. in Geography. His first chapbook of poems Follow This Creek came out earlier this year, published by Foothills Publishing. Besides writing, he enjoys cycling, hiking, camping, and photography. He works as an Associate Imagery Analyst in Huntsville, Alabama.