On Depot Hill, Capitola
We scaled the streets from the abandoned
railroad tracks that run by Soquel Creek
behind the degrading cement walls
painted with old graffiti, a section of town
that even delinquents and artists have left to go wild,
beach traffic thinning, seagulls invading,
restaurant traffic reaching congestion,
and came to a place at the top of a hill
under a murky sky half-mist half-darkness
where the last streetlamps sputtered,
sensors flickering between light and its absence,
and in our last strides we rose above the mist
to see the sun setting, below only darkening grey,
the city invisible but with an audible pulse,
heard sounds of silverware and clinking glasses
on the esplanade below, conversations of protest,
of a new civil war, fatigue, division and divorce,
ownership, loss, anger, hatred, and misery
echoing from the cliffs, a lone sea lion barking,
tolling like a bell, beached on the dry wood
of the underbelly of the wharf.
Reserve
Once rest slowed my pulse
but now it quickens when I stop
back and backpack bowed
head bent forward suddenly chin-chucked up
by a glinting feeder creek wandering
between the undulations of the sand hills,
wild penstemon and oxalis daisies
making a bright ring around water.
Winded, parched, all day I have marched,
stumbled on the tamped-down trail.
Why this contrapuntal response, this surge
in heart right when it should be relaxing?
My hands tremble, the creek clears before me.
Like a clumsy crane, I draw toward water.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He has work in Williwaw Journal, The Muleskinner Journal, Rabid Oak, and Red Wolf Journal.
We scaled the streets from the abandoned
railroad tracks that run by Soquel Creek
behind the degrading cement walls
painted with old graffiti, a section of town
that even delinquents and artists have left to go wild,
beach traffic thinning, seagulls invading,
restaurant traffic reaching congestion,
and came to a place at the top of a hill
under a murky sky half-mist half-darkness
where the last streetlamps sputtered,
sensors flickering between light and its absence,
and in our last strides we rose above the mist
to see the sun setting, below only darkening grey,
the city invisible but with an audible pulse,
heard sounds of silverware and clinking glasses
on the esplanade below, conversations of protest,
of a new civil war, fatigue, division and divorce,
ownership, loss, anger, hatred, and misery
echoing from the cliffs, a lone sea lion barking,
tolling like a bell, beached on the dry wood
of the underbelly of the wharf.
Reserve
Once rest slowed my pulse
but now it quickens when I stop
back and backpack bowed
head bent forward suddenly chin-chucked up
by a glinting feeder creek wandering
between the undulations of the sand hills,
wild penstemon and oxalis daisies
making a bright ring around water.
Winded, parched, all day I have marched,
stumbled on the tamped-down trail.
Why this contrapuntal response, this surge
in heart right when it should be relaxing?
My hands tremble, the creek clears before me.
Like a clumsy crane, I draw toward water.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He has work in Williwaw Journal, The Muleskinner Journal, Rabid Oak, and Red Wolf Journal.
