Jeff Burt
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has no famous royalty or criminals in his past, but many teachers and preachers, printers, and farmers. He has a chapbook available from Red Wolf Editions, and one recently published by Red Bird Chapbooks.
For Floyd
I read your brief words in the margins,
your pencil scratching a momentary truth
amid the sentences of others,
and I thought of you eighteen, farming
for your father incapacitated with heart failure
longing to attend college when he healed,
somewhere lost over a ridge toward the river
in the high corn, your mother waiting for a turn
of idling tractor to hail you with a towel for lunch,
those brief impressions like deepened furrows,
exclamation points like the footprints of crows.
