To Lori and Vine,
I witness a thundercloud form on the eastern edge of Colorado
in late May near a crowd of heifers grazing,
a slim but athletic twist that seems to gather with a ferocity,
not amassing slowly over hours but suddenly,
not quite like the snap of finger and thumb,
as when you are watching a swimmer going out
into a lake and comes a point when you understand he cannot make it back,
that he’s gone too far and your heart pumps quickly
and you look for a boat—the cloud gone angry, an amassed head
that glowers with darkness, a solidity that seems to defy gravity.
then rains. It rains on the cows and rains on the few trees the cows can find
and rains on me and my spare tire and my blown tire
and the highway and rains so hard I can barely see the semi come
that roars past within a foot of my car and swerves after the fact,
stops, and the driver runs with his head holding his hat that keeps nothing dry
to ask if I am alright, puts his hand on my shoulder and says
we’ll get through this as if the thunderhead is but one piece of a larger problem,
we stand speechless together because I don’t know what he means
but I understand, the tire iron in my hand as light as a hollow reed,
my clothes no longer heavy with rain but thin as gossamer,
and I wondered how he knew your brother, my friend, had died drunk
in our hometown, how Wounded Knee as occupation had ended
but the murders had not ceased, and this is to say I’m returning,
I’m returning as soon as I gather enough money that it precipitates,
that this letter written on small pages of the trucker’s note pad will find you
before I do, that I have a debt to repay, a kindness for a kindness,
that my life has taken on a new meaning looking for a new experience,
that I owe a life to your brother, to this land, rain, and this trucker
as we watch the thunderhead pummel a farm and the grasslands with a front edge
now with lightning hitting earth as it pushes east over Nebraska.
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife amid the redwoods and two-lane roads wide enough for one car. He works in mental health. He has work in Rabid Oak, Eclectica, Tar River Poetry, and Kestrel Journal. He was the featured 2015 summer issue poet of Clerestory, and won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review narrative poetry prize.
