Cover photo of
White Peacock Butterfly
taken by author

Once

Across a store once I caught a glance,
"This is how it can begin", a friend said,
and a smile like a song began to rise
from the land, the way a creek shakes
loose a stone and carries it onward.

Where's the old bridge, too rotten to cross?
and the tree frog you cradled, once?
By a waterfall that quieted the forest,
what answers did the canyon whisper,
a melody that couldn't be transcribed.

You years gone by, welcome.
This field we know is home,
you gathered here, be witness:
a sky can turn white, or black,
and the blue still go on.

Late, Walking

There are birds who would forget
their songs to learn yours.

Save me from the closed door
of my hand, my fingers hinges,
how to hold steady in moonlight
before you loved the rain away.

On those late night walks, the pecan
outside bent ever so slightly house-ward.

In slow measures it carved new worlds,
shadowgraphy in long lines across concrete,
the need to be free calling out
like mice sheltering in the fields from hawks,

the way the sky opens like an ocean,
is ready to calm, to crash.

•

Sam Calhoun © 2025

Click title to download micro

Ephemera

Leaves scatter-broom
in the wind, auroral
rays touch sight lines,
pressing my face
to the bark
telling history
like the resurrection
ferns, or hawks riding
thermals, a kite
untethered, trailing,
starlings long streamers
like stars.

Spectators

Out at dusk
we wild imitators,
paddle-drift, brethren
beneath Geminids
like submarines
un-anchored,
our eyes
periscopes
shining from
a lake
so still
so dark.

•

Sam Calhoun © 2024

Click title to download micro

Cover: Boardwalk photo taken by author along local trail in Marbut Bend, AL

• 

Virga

once
driving home,
I missed the rainbow--

but then
100 blackbirds
landed
in the cool
puddle
of broken
concrete

as if they were shot
out of that orange
jewelweed sky.

Apogee

Last night the full moon
Streamed, raced away, cirrus
over fallow fields
waiting to be forgotten.

Come spring who lives
in the old house?
The one with the chimney
I cannot see--

Smoke climbs
like rose branches,
thermals through bones
bare of the world

settle on the edge
of fields, forgotten cotton;
advent calendar.

--crows dance,
the hiss of
each passing car--

Is there still room in the dark to howl?

•

Sam Calhoun © 2023