Two Exceptional Poems by David Anson Lee

We do not publish books. We create legacies. 

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BIO

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores memory, mortality, landscape, and moral attention at the threshold between loss and revelation. His poems often draw on nature, medicine, and lived experience to suggest rather than define, favoring lyric restraint over declaration. He has been published in numerous literary journals, and his work seeks to honor silence as much as speech: listening for what endures after absence has spoken.

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The Year Teaches Its Last Lesson

The year loosens its grip
without apology:
calendar pages thinning
like breath on cold glass.

I walk the orchard after harvest.
Nothing argues with the ground.
The trees stand emptied,
their patience perfected.

What was taken was not stolen:
it was finished.
What fell did not vanish;
it entered the grammar of soil.

Even the light practices restraint,
arriving later, leaving earlier,
a mercy learned by repetition.

I touch the bark,
count rings I cannot see,
and understand at last:
time does not erase –
it ripens what remains.

Somewhere beneath my feet,
spring is already rehearsing
its first word.

Elegy with Sakura Still Breathing

At winter’s edge
the cherry tree remembers
how to blush.

Petals fall like questions
no one answers aloud.
Each chooses the earth
over the air:
a decision older than language.

I think of the voices
that no longer call my name,
how absence sharpens attention.
Even grief, when listened to,
becomes a teacher.

The wind moves through the branches
without taking anything.
This, too, is love.

When the last blossom releases,
the tree does not mourn.
It opens its hands to green.

What dies does not disappear:
it changes assignments.
Beauty is never late;
it arrives
when we are finally quiet enough to see.

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Reminder:

Literary Revelations is thrilled to announce an open call for submissions for our upcoming anthology, Haiku for Soulmates. Whether you have a soulmate and wish to celebrate your connection, or you dream of finding one, we invite you to share your poetic voice. If you have a soulmate, please compose five haiku for him or her. If you do not, let your imagination shape five haiku that describe the soulmate you hope to meet.

To participate, please submit your five haiku to literaryrevelations@pm.me and clearly label your email subject as Haiku for Soulmates. Please note that unlabeled submissions may be misplaced and not read. The submission deadline is February 25. Your five haiku will be accepted or rejected as a block.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Founder and Editor in Chief

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