Anniversary

the city edge, its concrete knife

divides the Earth, creates a cliff

the shifting gears engage to dive,

a morning drive becomes a trek

along the etching mountainside,

the tips of which all signals die;

ascending poles of cable lines,

the crooked rubber vines that test

the forest depth infested heights

with swarming trails of valleyed years

much older than the minutes here,

forgotten since and gone to ground,

to gravel found upon the paths

unravelled round the bend today,

today a day the years return,

it turns around to me again,

repeated now, but far removed

by twisted roads that have no end,

where maps pretend to know the way

through swaying wilds of ancient pine

inclined on slants of slated shelves,

that delve the dark of cratered holes

around reverbing curves that skirt

the skids my spinning makes in dirt;

the thinning miles, the barren miles,

as humans fade, the tree empires

expanding spans of secret green,

and losing me, i find the top,

the spot we used, the place you said

you’d always be, but all remains

decayed, reclaimed, reversed, undone,

embedded in the layered lime.

• September 2025

Submission History

Date	Publication	Status
September 14, 2025	Princemere Poetry Prize	Pending
October 6, 2025	Gilded Weathervane	Pending
October 6, 2025	Merion West	Rejected
October 7th, 2025	wildscape	Rejected
October 10th, 2025	Macrame Literary Journal	Pending
October 10th, 2025	January House Literary Journal	Rejected
October 12, 2025	New Feathers	Pending
October 12, 2025	Cosmic Daffodil	Rejected

Dear Grant,

Grant, I like the movement at the start of the poem “Anniversary”

“the city edge, its concrete knife divides the Earth, creates a cliff the shifting gears engage to dive”

I enjoyed reading your poems. You stay present in your writing. Words do float off the page with consistent effort.

I am the new Arts Editor for Merion West; we are in transition. This set of poems is not quite right for Merion West at this point. Continue to revel in the craft of writing.

Thank you for sharing your work with Merion West. We wish you the best in your writing.

—Austin Allen James