Jeff Burt
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz Country, California. He has a digital chapbook available, Little Popple River , from Red Wolf Editions, and a print chapbook, A Filament Drawn so Thin from Red Bird Chapbooks. He has previously contributed to Sheila-Na-Gig online.
Signature
Venturing out at dawn, I had hoped to find
the new-fallen snow untrammeled,
but already spied a trail of small boots
between my neighbor up the hill
and a lonely maple in the swale,
two hundred steps or more.
I could tell the left foot dragged
and the right foot punched
a clean impression in the snow,
that my neighbor struggled in a drift,
and tired on the way back, the distance
shorter between the steps
until no stride at all appeared,
measured by the distance of undisturbed snow.
The day sparkled, shined, made
everything dead look new.
In the leave-less maple a hanging
seed-packed bell of suet rang with song
as chickadee, nuthatch and finch
had the fat and seeds in full swing.
In a few seconds, I knew more about my neighbor
then I had ever known,
not her name, her elder status,
jobs held, children labored,
what she couldn’t cook or housekeep,
her constant critique of her spouse,
wit, a long, left arm up to wave a greeting.
I had learned of her otherness,
the part of her soul, to use a word
now damned into antiquity
that we do not share with others,
a holiness that our hearts do not tell,
a small moment of tenderness and will
by the signature of boot tracks on the snow.
She was the one who brought forth song
when the world had meant to silence it.
