Our Days in Rays of Light

By David Athey

---

Except when Mom handed us
the phone (“say hi to Grandma”)
our souls never felt called
to be wired
or digitized.

The wild was unscreened,
and free
woods across the road
was where our feet scrolled
into words made vines

and trees,
the tallest was a fire-
scorched pine named Ancient
that counted our days
in rays of light

in the crown. And our faces
were unknown to self-
ies, the breeze giving sway,
swaying
to what
​
felt like all
the dangers of the sky
dancing with all the real
drop-dead
gorgeous heavens.

---

David Athey’s poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including Christianity & Literature, Iowa Review, Dappled Things, Berkeley Fiction Review, Windhover, Relief, Time of Singing, and Harvard Review. Athey lives in South Florida on a small lake with large iguanas. His books, including Art is for The Artist, are available at Amazon.

David's other work on Foreshadow:
That Poet (Poetry, October 2024)