Stones Rise
Skimming the edge of an esker, gravel crunched by boots,
immature red polyps on bushes and white cranberries
popped up off to the sides, cedars dead or dying,
I stop to catch a breath on the scoured bowl of the glacier
near the hilly farms toward the Horicon Marsh
and the drumlin ponds like brimming spoons below.
I can’t hear a thing except the earth itself,
a hum and moan like the sound my large brother made
when he rolled over in his sleep.
There is no dead silence. Even before our time,
ice gathered and cracked. Rivers ran down crevasses
and trickled on these eskers like a flume to points south.
Water and wind effaced glacial slabs into till.
Sand subverted, rocks rose.
Even now, without the growl of a car in the distance
or the echo of a voice, sand and gravel ping,
shift, a pebble falls, another, inert ground yet grinds,
even brother Paul, dead, shifts in my chest,
jostled, rises like a stone in my throat.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, spending the seasons dodging fires, floods, earth-shaking, and all the other scrambling life-initiatives. He has contributed to Heartwood, Tiny Seeds Journal, Vita Poetica, and Willows Wept Review. He has a chapbook for free download at Red Wolf Editions and a second chapbook available from Red Bird Chapbooks.
