David Anthony Sam: “Hear like a Stone”

Hear like a Stone

Hear, like a stone,
as the Amtrak rattles
its brittle commute
back to your home.

Your fate is as clear
as vapor wriggling
from the lips of
your dead saints.

The millstones grind
your thoughts until
they falter like
devious old men.

Sunset is red-gold
on the rails, astral
fortune for ephemera
like you. Then,

you punch Sicily
into your smartphone,
hoping someone answers
your granite ears.

–after Rimbaud, “Entends Comme Brame”

 

David Anthony Sam lives in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. Sam has four collections, and his chapbook, Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson, won the 2016 Grand Prize in GFT Press’s Chapbook Contest. In 2017, he began serving as GFT Poetry Editor. www.davidanthonysam.com