Seaward
When submerged in the sea,
look both ways.
Rip tides carry your endurance
out into the time of your nothing.
You have to outlast the suffocation
in order to breathe water
into its holiness.
The red-orange sun promises
some sort of weather.
Westerlies fill sails in directions
that curse the storm.
The last gull seen
is the wisest way.
I navigated the years with my map
folded so tightly
all lands became one truth.
Accepting the injustice of fame,
my decision to ride sunset
down to its false destination
in a boiling ocean
bursts heat lightning
beyond the horizon.
I am a silent one, dressed
by the salt of the ocean wind,
an animate pillar of memory
looking too much backward.
My lips cup the sea.
The sea calls me without name.
I am its home.
David Anthony Sam lives in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. His poetry has appeared in over 90 journals and his poem, First and Last, won the 2018 Rebecca Lard Award. Six of his collections are in print including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018), Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson, 2016 Grand Prize winner of the GFT Press Chapbook Contest, and Dark Fathers (Kelsay Books 2019). He teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College, from where he retired as president in 2017 and serves as the Regional VP on the Board of the Virginia Poetry Society. www.davidanthonysam.com
