"After First Frost" & "Subdivisions" by Sam Calhoun

After First Frost

Let’s be unrealistic.  

I’ll pretend the armadillo 

isn’t dead in the ditch,

it’s half burrowed hole

beneath the hostas 

filled with leaves,

that the white aster

in the spent raised beds

matter still to anyone,

the fritillaries long gone,

only the buzz of a thousand 

Asian lady beetles leering 

from the garage window

in the brief warm midday sun.

Subdivisions 

Below the red barn

the red hills run 

tilled for the last time

reaching the creek 

slipstream into eddies

and are gone.

I want to say stop.

Stay with me longer

than the morning stratus

filled sky, a language

deeper than blood

that dries it’s eyes 

knowing the storm 

isn’t here yet, 

isn't here yet.  

Sam Calhoun is a writer and photographer living in Elkmont, AL. The author of the chapbook “Follow This Creek” (Foothills Publishing), and a collaborative work “The Hemlock Poems” (Present Tense Media), part of the Conservation Through Art: Saving Alabama's Hemlock program and exhibit. his poems have appeared in Pregnant Moon Review, Westward Quarterly, Eratos, Boats Against the Current, and numerous other journals. Follow him on Instagram @weatherman_sam, or his website, www.weathermansam.com.