Two Poems by Jeff Burt

Jay's Jangle

A drop, a drizzle, a driving rain,
a stellar jay mocking mockingbirds

out on a wire in the monsoon, jeering
at the catcalls, the coos from the cover,

sings tough-guy talk, schoolyard bully-brag,
bold enough to ignore wet wings, cold, death.

On this day the stellar jay is the only shiny
and winged thing--it struts,

a stain the rain cannot wash away.
It shoots through wind, grabs the highest line

of the staff of telephone wires,
heckles the throng of sparrows that flicker

in the shrubs, jangles a grating key
as it stands king of concrete on the walk

trilling, drop-speckled, spackled
by the downspout foam.



Possum

He heard the mountains ring hammered by the sky,
the driving head of thunder with forked claws of rain,

was not afraid to travel the road.
It was when he faced the interrogating glare

of headlights that he learned to fear
the whining saws of tires unimpeded by a sudden turn,

the certain aiming of lights which reduce the world
to muffled cries in murky shadows.

For this he came to value the knowledge of pipes,
fissures, gulleys, the first quick step

into foliage and culvert the lights
will not, cannot, investigate.




Jeff Burt has published works in Dandelion Farm Review, Nature Writing, and many others.  He enjoys plum blossoms, eating plums from the branch, and listening to them plop on the soil.