Spore Caps
It’s not daffodils that toll the beginning of spring,
but tiny bells of moss, miniature blooms
releasing soft-shelled drops into the wind,
so small you might mistake them for hallucinatory pixels
that occur in your vision when rising too quickly.
If the sparrows are cared for
and the dry fields run riot with lupine,
so a kindness must spare these spores,
that by the first warm day of spring,
mossy parents aged and hardened,
new life has been carried aloft
and set down to root.
They do not fight for space,
do not have the dominating encroachment
of weeds, the wonder of corms of crocus
or tunic coated tulip bulbs,
the soft surprise of pussy willows
before the snow has disappeared.
Lacking filament, these flowers of moss rise
weak and early like I, an introvert,
who gets on the bus at the previous stop
to ensure a seat where I will not be drawn
into question and conversation.
Common fodder, spores will be jostled
out of space, shredded, buried, mulched
by early leaf cutters, sow bugs, mowers,
saprophytes, larvae, and spawn.
As we have devoured many things on earth,
so those we devour, devour these.
But for these few weeks before emergent green
they appear in the cold that is neither winter nor spring,
in a light that is neither weak nor glorious,
in a space that is neither rich nor spare.
While others sharpen the blades
of the mower, I let them grow.
North Pacific Avenue Breach
It was a breach, jailbreak,
not a flood, water
malevolent, out-of-control,
not rock-bound like a river,
no escape-preventing boulders,
just water, loam and clay
eroded by the rush of a stream
not intended to be routed,
a surge, wander, roil
over what the earth had meant
not to trespass, a culvert
laid even broken
and what it carried
now a wide and vigorous force
making its own ditch
like a furious backhoe
and foamless falling through
a fence line that could
not stop what went under it
forty feet to a street below
where in destructive churns
young boys swung in glee
and a kerchiefed woman smiled
under a red umbrella
River San Lorenzo
Fog comforts the introvert in ways the sun never will.
Haunted by your loss, I walk in the river’s mouth without rapture.
Drought drains the river, boulders appear like old men
worn in their work, crayfish visible in pools where currents swirl,
pawing for morsels the water hides. Upstream, subsurface
rocks shape flow, turn one current against another.
I have buried things, I have held things against you, brother,
I have climbed the cliffs of pride.
Water falls like mallets on kettledrums of rock,
thunder of hooves on a hard prairie.
The stretched hide of redemption beats.
The plunging of forgiveness is not like a waterfall with its pleasant rush,
a swallow diving in ecstasy, but a scaffold of support given way.
I dive, tumble, drop. Arms flail. The heart kicks.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County. He has contributed to Williwaw Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Willows Wept Review, Heartwood, and others. Web site: https://www.jeff-burt.com/
It’s not daffodils that toll the beginning of spring,
but tiny bells of moss, miniature blooms
releasing soft-shelled drops into the wind,
so small you might mistake them for hallucinatory pixels
that occur in your vision when rising too quickly.
If the sparrows are cared for
and the dry fields run riot with lupine,
so a kindness must spare these spores,
that by the first warm day of spring,
mossy parents aged and hardened,
new life has been carried aloft
and set down to root.
They do not fight for space,
do not have the dominating encroachment
of weeds, the wonder of corms of crocus
or tunic coated tulip bulbs,
the soft surprise of pussy willows
before the snow has disappeared.
Lacking filament, these flowers of moss rise
weak and early like I, an introvert,
who gets on the bus at the previous stop
to ensure a seat where I will not be drawn
into question and conversation.
Common fodder, spores will be jostled
out of space, shredded, buried, mulched
by early leaf cutters, sow bugs, mowers,
saprophytes, larvae, and spawn.
As we have devoured many things on earth,
so those we devour, devour these.
But for these few weeks before emergent green
they appear in the cold that is neither winter nor spring,
in a light that is neither weak nor glorious,
in a space that is neither rich nor spare.
While others sharpen the blades
of the mower, I let them grow.
North Pacific Avenue Breach
It was a breach, jailbreak,
not a flood, water
malevolent, out-of-control,
not rock-bound like a river,
no escape-preventing boulders,
just water, loam and clay
eroded by the rush of a stream
not intended to be routed,
a surge, wander, roil
over what the earth had meant
not to trespass, a culvert
laid even broken
and what it carried
now a wide and vigorous force
making its own ditch
like a furious backhoe
and foamless falling through
a fence line that could
not stop what went under it
forty feet to a street below
where in destructive churns
young boys swung in glee
and a kerchiefed woman smiled
under a red umbrella
River San Lorenzo
Fog comforts the introvert in ways the sun never will.
Haunted by your loss, I walk in the river’s mouth without rapture.
Drought drains the river, boulders appear like old men
worn in their work, crayfish visible in pools where currents swirl,
pawing for morsels the water hides. Upstream, subsurface
rocks shape flow, turn one current against another.
I have buried things, I have held things against you, brother,
I have climbed the cliffs of pride.
Water falls like mallets on kettledrums of rock,
thunder of hooves on a hard prairie.
The stretched hide of redemption beats.
The plunging of forgiveness is not like a waterfall with its pleasant rush,
a swallow diving in ecstasy, but a scaffold of support given way.
I dive, tumble, drop. Arms flail. The heart kicks.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County. He has contributed to Williwaw Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Willows Wept Review, Heartwood, and others. Web site: https://www.jeff-burt.com/