Circle
When last I stood enraptured it was not on a cliff
overlooking the quarry and the several hawks
rising the updrafts over the thin pan of water below
nor in-between the splines of sunshine and shadow
as light began to transfigure darkness
and humans began to take what animals had roamed.
These had been sufficient and I was not eager for more,
turned toward home. Yet a tiny pink glove, a jam jar,
and a picture book stood upright in a small scrim
of Scotch broom as if a child had entered, sat
and flipped the pages with one hand smeared with strawberry
and one hand covered, such were the treasures of childhood.
I recalled a thicket of juniper behind which I’d read
an illustrated dictionary as best I could at age five
beside my grandparent’s house, a hot summer afternoon,
falling asleep and waking to a nudge from my mother
who held one index finger to her mouth to shush
and the other index to still my mouth,
the book hidden in the lap of a swirling dress,
and my quick understanding that not only did she approve
but that she had also done this before.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has contributed to Tar River Poetry, Williwaw Journal, Heartwood, and Red Wolf Journal. He won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.
When last I stood enraptured it was not on a cliff
overlooking the quarry and the several hawks
rising the updrafts over the thin pan of water below
nor in-between the splines of sunshine and shadow
as light began to transfigure darkness
and humans began to take what animals had roamed.
These had been sufficient and I was not eager for more,
turned toward home. Yet a tiny pink glove, a jam jar,
and a picture book stood upright in a small scrim
of Scotch broom as if a child had entered, sat
and flipped the pages with one hand smeared with strawberry
and one hand covered, such were the treasures of childhood.
I recalled a thicket of juniper behind which I’d read
an illustrated dictionary as best I could at age five
beside my grandparent’s house, a hot summer afternoon,
falling asleep and waking to a nudge from my mother
who held one index finger to her mouth to shush
and the other index to still my mouth,
the book hidden in the lap of a swirling dress,
and my quick understanding that not only did she approve
but that she had also done this before.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has contributed to Tar River Poetry, Williwaw Journal, Heartwood, and Red Wolf Journal. He won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.