The Year I Carried You
Bees drowsed in the pear blossoms,
tulip poplars blazed green-gold,
mountain laurel blinked open, soft pink.
Carolina silverbells trembled, light as breath,
shedding their white skirts to the wind.
Flame azaleas split like lips exhaling.
Monsoon rains soaked the hills until
waterfalls roared and maitake danced
soft, tender; fruiting at the root
of moss-laden oaks.
Serviceberries swelled purple in the heat.
Jasmine and magnolia thickened the air
to a slow honey that clung to my skin,
sweetness pooling in the hollows.
It was the year I managed historic
Bald Mountain Farms in the Blue Ridge.
The chickens laid warm brown eggs,
and every morning, I cracked them open,
yolks spilling, gold as the sun.
Twelve calves staggered into the world
that season; wet and blinking, their breath
rising in the cool mountain dawn.
Peaches hung heavy, their skins splitting,
cherries darkened to a blood-red gloss.
The June strawberry moon
swelled on the solstice that year; the sky
pulling itself into perfect alignment.
We took the pontoon out on Lake Lure,
rocked in deep water as the gorge blushed pink,
then glowed solstice gold. We watched the light stretch
its long fingers
over the ridges,
over my body,
over you.
That moonrise!
Huge, full, ripe.
You turned inside me then—
a slow somersault,
the tide answering the pull of the night.
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Rare Frequencies by Sara Shea (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://finishinglinepress.com/product/rare-frequencies-by-sara-shea/
Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review. She pursued graduate studies through the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville and at WCU, where she studied with Ron Rash. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Connecticut River Review, Quarterly West, The Static in Our Stars Anthology, Amsterdam Quarterly, Gaslamp Pulp, New Plains Review, The Goodlife Review, The Awakenings Review, Atlanta Review, Petigru Review and Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Her first chapbook In A Photograph Already Burning was published in 2025 by Tiny Cat Press.
