Jeff Burt

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California and works in mental health. His poems have appeared in Rabid Oak, Eclectica, Williwaw Journal, Tar River Poetry, and ucity. He won the 2017 Cold Mountain Poetry Prize.

To Weather

This is not an ode to clouds and a barometric low
that races from northwest dark and furious

nor to the artisan who buys used dressers
made in New Hampshire and stresses

with pits and paint to make them look both new
and old, immaculate neo-rustic French,

but to the farmer’s face of leather gone taut and wrinkled,
sagged and furrowed with the lifting

of vision, of gratitude, whose lips are pursed
to hold back the empty words

that cannot contain the fields wet with working
or the grain waltzing to the wind at dawn

eyes squinting at one rub of sun rising in the east
a second wipe of storm approaching from the west