“Hellbender” by Sara Shea
Written by Sara Shea, 2025 Tremont Writers Conference participant. Applications are open for the 2026 Tremont Writers Conference through May 15; learn more and apply.
Back in the fall, when I was on scholarship to the Tremont Writers Conference, I enjoyed our short excursion to the creek to search for salamanders and write poems about nature and aquatic creatures. On that day, I began writing an autumn poem about salamanders.
I re-worked the poem and it evolved into this poem titled “Hellbender”.
I remain deeply and profoundly grateful for my time at Tremont. It was an incredibly nurturing and restorative experience during a particularly dark and painful time in my life.
Hellbender
by Sara Shea
October leaves
muddle the Middle
Prong of the Little River,
whispering through liverwort,
through slivers of sunlight,
where strider beetles
still skitter.
Summer’s cricket racket
slows
to whisper.
Russet sourwoods quiver,
birch and pawpaw shiver.
Witch-hazel blossoms wither
in a wind that hints of winter.
The watercress bitters.
Foxfire glimmers.
Usnea, sphagnum moss
blanket banks and hemlock logs,
where crawdads scavenge,
polywogs and wild hogs
root pickerel frogs.
Sweet-gum balls drop, rot
and molder into older leaf litter,
or bob along swift water
covered by doghobble,
deep in sleepy hollers
of Fodderstack Mountain.
Slumbering under water,
under thunderhead
sandstone, a buried wonder
nests in layers of time
and slime.
An old creature rests,
dreaming, fading,
already leaving
this grieving world behind.
The hellbender breathes
lichen, mica, mycelium.
Blinks dim eyes,
black as spent stars.
Wise, yet marked
by the slow arc of demise.
He works the current, blocking
predators, sweeps debris,
ancient tail rocking.
He keeps circulating oxygen,
swimming through the nest
and back again,
pulling breath to depths
to nurture them.
He wills his gills
to slow and still.
In cold cascades
of swirls and whirls,
he guards his clutch —
gelled strands of pearls.
Each bead:
a fragile,
breathing world.
Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review. She’s pursued graduate studies through the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville and at Western Carolina University, where she studied with Ron Rash.
Her work has appeared in The Connecticut River Review, Quarterly West, The Static in Our Stars Anthology, Key West Love Poetry Anthology, Amsterdam Quarterly, Gaslamp Pulp, Petigru Review, New Plains Review, The Awakenings Review, and Atlanta Review.
Shea is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the New Millennium Poetry Prize judged by UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Her first chapbook of poetry In A Photograph Already Burning was published in 2025 by Tiny Cat Press. Her second chapbook, Rare Frequencies, will be available from Finishing Line Press in fall of 2026. Shea writes professionally, producing marketing materials for a fine arts gallery in Asheville, NC.
