Sam Aureli
What Remains
“What Remains” grew out of a longing to reconnect with a part of my past I didn’t fully understand when I was living it. Behind my Nonna’s house in Italy, there was a fig tree I barely noticed growing up, though it was always there, offering sweetness I didn’t yet know how to taste. Writing this poem, I found myself returning to that place, to the smell of the earth, the hum of bees, the warmth of late summer light. I realized how much of my life I’ve touched without recognizing its holiness. This poem, and the collection it belongs to, “What the Earth Remembers,” are my way of slowing down—of listening to what the land has been trying to tell me all along.
Behind Nonna’s house,
a fig tree leaned over the stone wall,
stooping as if to pick up
a dropped wooden spoon.
In late summer,
the fruit hung low and split—
skin thin as breath,
flesh the color of dusk.
As a child,
I plucked them absently,
juice trailing down my arm,
not knowing that sweetness
was a kind of praise—
bees weren’t a warning,
but a blessing.
Now, in the hush before morning,
I recall its branches,
light threading through them—
a secret passed from leaf to leaf.
What else have I touched
without knowing its holiness?
Sam Aureli is a design and construction professional, originally from Italy, now calling the Boston area home. A first-generation college graduate, he’s spent decades immersed in concrete and steel. Poetry is what truly feeds his soul these days. With retirement still some time away, Sam balances the grind of his day job with the refuge he finds in writing. His work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, West Trade Review, Chestnut Review, and other literary journals. Sam was also the Grand Prize Winner in The October Project’s 2025 Poetry Contest, a Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2025 International Poetry Competition, and a finalist in the Good Life Poetry HoneyBee Prize.
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