Poetry by Sam Barbee

      Jim Choate CC




In the Right Light


Read the chapter better.
Stir the soup on the stove safer.
Utter I now see in the darkening room.

The abject dark achieves neither    
joyful peak nor sorrowful low. 
The right, night, bright, light

hosts an echo, hymn of saints,
their estranged blessings. Even
with starlight, a bitter smile brightens.

Candle flare retrieves just enough.
Frees the moth from a bottomless mouth.  
Taper’s flicker seizes the pendulum,

freezes its sway. Midnight’s
homily recited – grateful for the blaze.    
Brightens paralysis into grace.

​


Sam Barbee's most-recent collection is titled Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, Redhawk Publishing). Three previous collections include That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016. Also, Uncommon Book of Prayer (2021, Main Street Rag) which chronicles family travels in England. 
 
His poems appeared in Poetry South, Salvation South, Dead Mule School of Literature, and Streetlight Magazine, also upcoming in Cave Wall, among others; plus on-line journals Ekphrastic Review, Verse Virtual, Grand Little Things, and Medusa’s Kitchen; and is a two-time Pushcart nominee.