Dry Well
The well dries up, we say,
even though the water level lowers.
Maybe we say up to give us hope
it will fill again, rise to our breach
in the earth, a promised child
sliding out of its birth canal.
Up, we whisper to the water, up,
spill over the boundaries of brick,
burst the pipes, wreck the valves,
like a fountain gush over us,
flood, soften where we stand.
Like a child, alter our lives.
Quarter Horse
I step into the blistered sand
the receding river leaves,
black gnats and bottle flies
swirling in cyclonic chaos
only Pandora might understand,
the spring-swift ferocity
of water turned feeble in July.
A beetle does rhythmic squats
before flying from the river,
and reminds of the one-two-three
body-rock to lift a leg
to the waiting loop of the stirrup
of the liver-splotched pinto
like Juliet’s leg risen in ballet
to the suspended arm of Romeo.
A horse named Liberty kicked me once,
left a bruise in the shape of Omega
on my compressed sternum,
so judgment and a faulty hip keeps
my feet anchored to the earth.
It doesn’t take a ride to set me free.
Today I woke in the dark
and thought of that horse,
and though the universe remains
saddle-shaped, cinched, curried and cold,
in my small and planetary space,
where doubt may smother knowledge,
this morning the backdoor yawned
into earth’s confirming grace
and I entered, did the one-two-three
to begin another ride.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County and works in mental health. He has poems in Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Eclectica, and won the Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.
The well dries up, we say,
even though the water level lowers.
Maybe we say up to give us hope
it will fill again, rise to our breach
in the earth, a promised child
sliding out of its birth canal.
Up, we whisper to the water, up,
spill over the boundaries of brick,
burst the pipes, wreck the valves,
like a fountain gush over us,
flood, soften where we stand.
Like a child, alter our lives.
Quarter Horse
I step into the blistered sand
the receding river leaves,
black gnats and bottle flies
swirling in cyclonic chaos
only Pandora might understand,
the spring-swift ferocity
of water turned feeble in July.
A beetle does rhythmic squats
before flying from the river,
and reminds of the one-two-three
body-rock to lift a leg
to the waiting loop of the stirrup
of the liver-splotched pinto
like Juliet’s leg risen in ballet
to the suspended arm of Romeo.
A horse named Liberty kicked me once,
left a bruise in the shape of Omega
on my compressed sternum,
so judgment and a faulty hip keeps
my feet anchored to the earth.
It doesn’t take a ride to set me free.
Today I woke in the dark
and thought of that horse,
and though the universe remains
saddle-shaped, cinched, curried and cold,
in my small and planetary space,
where doubt may smother knowledge,
this morning the backdoor yawned
into earth’s confirming grace
and I entered, did the one-two-three
to begin another ride.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County and works in mental health. He has poems in Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Eclectica, and won the Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.