Morning Embers
I wanted to be a desert
but I was just a drought
heavy with heat and desire
to sustain myself with whatever
I dried to death. I killed the creeks
pulled the green from the groves
took from you a harvest so famine
could stare through your window.
I liked to let the clouds
mother across the sky
to feed your desperate breath
abreast of my yawning weather.
I made the shade torture
by telling you of its temporality
I raged a wildfire on your horizon
to burn your home into a memory.
How still you stood as it crept.
A monolith of defiance and flesh
your scent scorches in my brain
as I weep the land to life
each morning I dream
of you and the fire.
Sam Campbell grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and has since fled west for whatever reason. A Best of the Net nominee, his work appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Bombay Gin, Red Earth Review, and Hoxie Gorge Review, among others. He holds an MFA from Boise State University and is Assistant Professor of English at Prince William Sound College in Valdez, Alaska.
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