February 2021
Sam Barbee
sambarbee@bellsouth.net
Bio Note: I suppose I am a southern poet and many of my poems draw on that association. My poems have appeared in Poetry South, The NC Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review plus on-line journals Vox Poetica, Courtland Review, and New Verse News. My second poetry collection, That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), was a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016; and am a Pushcart nominee.

Just Get Here

She whispers into the land-line.  
Bedside. Clear and clean.
No hilltop static.
No valley’s drop-out.

I need you beside me.
Acceleration. Expectation.
Acknowledging expanse.  
Rendezvous envisioned.  

My role in our fragile scheme.
Pulse. Pant. Yearning.  
I have learned
back roads, short cuts.

Just get here – command and plea. 
Apportioned in a place 
she was never christened 
to be. Fused gasp.

No prerequisites which borders 
and buttresses must yield.
I ease each door.  Creak  
twelve hardwood stairs.
©2021 Sam Barbee
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL