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Poetry
by Jeff Burt Tuesday Do not let me die on a Tuesday, the day of no significance. There is a beauty the day after, the grade-schooler who eats her cup of pears out on the steps while spring branches splurge on blossoms and robins flash like hidden cards up sleeves, and there is a beauty the day after the day after when the first slim lupine blooms and a boy bends to look at it and hums as if the flower had a tune and he could carry it, home, or the day after the day after the day, when Phil plays Amazing Grace on his harmonica and old men weep. I am not so attached to his earth that I cannot go when it’s my turn, but that next Saturday do not let me die for I need a day off from all this dying I’ve worked for years to do. May All true believing begins in May when roses flourish and blossoms spike like profits climbing to the corner of the chart. Plums bud, tomatoes churn out little tabs of butter-colored blooms and wet-feathered robins cry for worms. Days warm and conversation heats up. Strangers greet with pulled-up faces that all through April were downcast and fixed as if plastered or masked. Children’s jackets drag. Cleats click on pavement and cement. Faith soars. Couples wed, promising until death a constancy their brains cannot comprehend. Death comes, adjournment understood, the lilies scattered in the sanctuary the same lilies growing in the ground on the route to the reception. Baptisms in rivers and lakes occur, pent up Pentecostals drowning and reviving their brethren, Baptists dipping and clapping and the world promising more. August Dog Days Two buzz-cut boys traipsing, tracking down the diviner hunched with dowsing stick, a witching rod, his eyes dry cracked cups with dark flared saucers curled beneath them, we found the stallion Cold Rolled Steel that galloped hard tail teased out until darkness devoured him like a drop and we were left to ravage the tin of the earth for the scent of his iron shoes and the molten fragrance of mane; and watched as darkness swept the valley from the third-story perch, a yellow lamp behind us and a fan blowing cool air into the staggering wall of heat behind us; and down in the brown-brown hills and cedars the stocky black bull standing stone-still in a torrential rain so thick and cold it seemed to gel on his back, the place where steam rose, he in no need of lightning, for he was thunder. |
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