Kelly R. Samuels
Is a dip in the land, a depression natural to the topography. Gatherer of murky water – not to cup and drink from. Not to see the sky reflected. Though still shining, a glimmer from a distance. A seam undone. White of a tired eye. We knew to walk there would bring squelch and damp. Mud rising above the sole, drying cakey and lighter. And we would need to sit on the back step and work away with a soft brush what marked our journey. Like a wound. Like a bruise in the pear’s skin, soft. Almost asking for press or leave to sprawl. Not good for the farmer, for the planting of tidy rows and later harvesting. Tsk, tsk, talk of filling in. Though never done or done well – the ground wanting to sink some, meld with what is found just under, below. Here, the leaf in the foreground. The structure in the far distance. And all the gold lustrous still less than.
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Kelly R. Samuels is a Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She is the author of two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, The Pinch, DMQ Review, Salt Hill, and Quiddity. She lives in the Upper Midwest.