The Year I Carried You | Sara Shea
The beauty of the land was blinding.
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.
about the author:
Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review. Shea pursued graduate classes through the Great Smokies Writing Program, UNC Asheville, and Western Carolina University, where she studied under Ron Rash. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Connecticut River Review, Quarterly West, The Key West Love Poetry Anthology, Amsterdam Review, Gaslamp Pulp and Petigru Review. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Shea writes professionally, producing marketing materials for a fine arts gallery in Asheville, NC.