The storm blew blue eucalyptus
leaves like coins spilling
from the slots of a one-armed bandit,
your dog a gambler
that didn’t know what to do
with the riches piling at her feet.
Thunder came and went but stayed
inside the head, a migraine,
vertigo, syncope.
All these rough isobars,
storm a raw pugilist
come to shake his fists
and drool from his maw,
who threatens to stay
until he is fought.
You’re afraid, hide indoors,
deking, bobbing, flinching,
hair on your arms tentacular.
You sleep in fits. By dawn
you find him on a different card
spouting in another city.
Score
Notes fell from trees
as robins and woodpeckers
jostled for plums.
Below, I looked up
in a moment of bliss
as if gathering a song
years later I would sing
in the trials of loneliness,
a soldier who finds rapture
in the minute the guns
have gone quiet
before the killing begins
Bionote
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He works in mental health.
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